TR 3705

Tec hnic al Report
NetApp and VMware View Solution Guide

Chris Gebhardt, NetApp June 2011 | TR-3705 Version 4.5. 1
BEST PRACTICES FOR DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, DEPLOYMENT, AND MANAGEMENT

This document provides NetApp best practices on designing, arc hitecting, deploying, and managing a scalable VMware View 4. X (V DI) environment on NetApp storage.
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 EX ECUTIV E SUMMARY ...............................................................................................................5

1.1 1.2 1.3 IMPLEMENTING BEST PRACTICES.......................................................................................................................... 5 WHATS NEW.............................................................................................................................................................. 5 AUDIENCE .................................................................................................................................................................. 5
2 3 4
SCOP E ........................................................................................................................................6 INTRODUCTION TO VMWARE VIEW ...........................................................................................6 VMWARE VIEW POOLS ...............................................................................................................6
4.1 VMWARE VIEW DESKTOP DELIVERY MODELS...................................................................................................... 7
NETAPP SOLUTION AND COMPONENTS ...................................................................................8

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 SINGL E SCALABLE UNIFIED ARCHIT ECTURE ....................................................................................................... 9 STORAGE EFFICIENCY ............................................................................................................................................. 9 PERFORMANCE ....................................................................................................................................................... 11 OPERATIONAL AGILITY .......................................................................................................................................... 12 DATA PROTECTION................................................................................................................................................. 16
NETAPP AND VMWARE VIEW DES KTOP POOLS .....................................................................17

6.1 6.2 MANUAL DESKTOP POOL ...................................................................................................................................... 19 AUTOMATED DESKTOP POOL ............................................................................................................................... 19
ACCELERATI NG VMWARE VI EW WITH READ AND WRITE I/O OPTIMIZATION ........................21

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 CONCEPTS ............................................................................................................................................................... 21 NETAPP WRIT E OPTIMIZATION.............................................................................................................................. 22 BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING ......................................................................................................... 22 DEDUPLICATION AND NONDUPLICATION TECHNOLOGIES .............................................................................. 23 CACHING MODUL ES................................................................................................................................................ 25 TRADITIONAL AND VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING................................................................................................ 25 SUMMARY OF TRANSPARENT STORAGE ARRAY CACHE IN A VMWARE VIEW ENVIRONMENT .................. 31 SUMMARY................................................................................................................................................................. 32
STORAGE SIZI NG BEST P RACTICES ........................................................................................32

8.1 8.2 8.3 GATHER ESSENTIAL SOLUTION REQUIREM ENTS .............................................................................................. 32 PERFORMANCE-BASED AND CAPACITY-BASED STORAGE ESTIMATION PROCESS .................................... 34 GETTING RECOMMENDATIONS ON STORAGE SYST EM PHYSICAL AND LOGICAL CONFIGURATION ......... 43
STORAGE ARCHITECTURE BEST PRACTICES ........................................................................43

9.1 STORAGE SYST EM CONFIGURATION BEST PRACTICES................................................................................... 44
10 CONFIGURING VSC 2.0 PROVISIONING AND CLONING ...........................................................46 11 DEPLOYING NETAPP SPACE-EFFICI ENT VM CLONES.............................................................49
11.1 OVERVIEW OF DEPLOYING NETAPP SPACE- EFFICIENT CLONES .................................................................... 49
NetApp and VMwa re Vie w Solution Guide: Best Practices f or Design, Architecture, Deployment, and Management
11.2
DETAILS OF DEPLOYING NETAPP SPACE- EFFICIENT CLONES ........................................................................ 50
12 USING VSC 2.0 PROVISIONI NG AND CLONI NG REDEPLOY .....................................................66 13 VMWARE VIEW OPERATIONAL BEST PRACTI CES ..................................................................70
13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 DATA DEDUPLICATION........................................................................................................................................... 70 ANTIVIRUS OPERATIONS ....................................................................................................................................... 73 MONITORING NETAPP AND VMWARE VIEW INFRASTRUCTURE....................................................................... 74 DATA PROTECTION SOLUTION ............................................................................................................................. 74
14 SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................75 15 FEEDBACK................................................................................................................................76 16 REFERENCES ...........................................................................................................................76 17 VERSION HISTORY ...................................................................................................................77 18 ABOUT THE AUTHOR ...............................................................................................................77 19 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................78
LIST OF TABLES Table 1) Typical provisioning, data persistence, and user assignment for each pool type. ....................... 8 Table 2) NetApp value proposition. .................................................................................................... 18 Table 3) Manual desktop pool. .......................................................................................................... 19 Table 4) VMware View Composer Full Clone. .................................................................................... 20 Table 5) VMware View Composer Linked Clones. .............................................................................. 20 Table 6) Deduplication Recommendations for different data types. ...................................................... 24 Table 7) VMware file listing. .............................................................................................................. 36 Table 8) Summary of storage considerations for desktop delivery models. ........................................... 42
LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1) VMware View features (source: VMware). ............................................................................. 7 Figure 2) Traditional and thin provisioning. ......................................................................................... 10 Figure 3) Increased disk utilization with NetApp thin provisioning. ....................................................... 10 Figure 4) NetApp deduplication. ........................................................................................................ 11 Figure 5) NetApp VSC plug-in. .......................................................................................................... 13 Figure 6) NetApp Provisioning and Cloning plug-in in VMware vCenter. ............................................... 14 Figure 7) NetApp SANscreen VM Insight plug-in in VMware vCenter. .................................................. 15 Figure 8) NetApp Operations Manager. ............................................................................................. 16 Figure 9) NetApp Backup and Recovery plug-in. ................................................................................ 17 Figure 10) VMware View linked clone data layout using NetApp VS T. ................................................. 21 Figure 11) Power and heat savings for Flash Cache compared to one FC 15K disk shelf. ..................... 23
Figure 12) NetApp deduplication in VMware environments. ................................................................ 24 Figure 13) Traditional legacy storage array caching. ........................................................................... 26 Figure 14) Cache and data deduplic ation with NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering. ..................................... 27 Figure 15) Virtual Storage Tiering with data deduplication. .................................................................. 27 Figure 16) Transparent storage array caching with Flash Cache and deduplication. ............................. 28 Figure 17) NetApp Flash Cache without deduplication. ....................................................................... 29 Figure 18) NetApp Flash Cache with deduplication. ............................................................................ 30 Figure 19) Overview of capacity estimation process. .......................................................................... 36 Figure 20) FlexClone scalability. ....................................................................................................... 43 Figure 21) NetApp VSC 2.0 deployment overview. ............................................................................. 49 Figure 22) Provision NetApp storage. ................................................................................................ 50 Figure 23) Build template virtual machine. ......................................................................................... 54 Figure 24) Deploy space-efficient clones with VS C 2.0. ...................................................................... 55 Figure 25) Provision with NetApp VSC 2.0 and redeploy patched VMs with VSC 2. 0. ........................... 67
1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The NetApp solution enables companies to optimize their virtual infrastructures by providing advanced storage and data management capabilities. NetApp provides industry-leading storage solutions that simplify virtual machine (VM) provisioning; enable mass VM cloning and redeployment; handle typical I/O bursts, for ex ample, boot storm, antivirus storms, efficient operating system (OS), application, and user data management, and so on; provide individual VM backup and restores; deliver simple and flexible business continuance; and help reduce virtual desktop storage. This solution guide provides guidelines and best practices for architecting, deploying, and managing VMware View (VDI) solutions on NetApp storage systems. NetApp has been providing advanced storage features to VMware ES X-based solutions since the product began shipping in 2001. During that time, NetApp has continuously enhanced the design, deployment, and operational guidelines for the storage systems and ESX Serverbased VDI solutions. These techniques have been documented and are referred to as best practices. This solution best practices guide describes them in detail.
1.1
IMPLEMENTING BEST PRACTICES
The recommendations and practices presented in this document should be considered deployment requirements unless otherwise stated. While not implementing all of the contained best practices does not affect ones ability to obtain support from NetApp and VMware, disregarding any of thes e practices commonly results in the need to implement them at a later date, on a much larger environment, and often with the requirement of application downtime. For these reasons we advocat e that one implement all of the best practices as defined within this document as a part of ones initial deployment or migration. All recommendations in this document apply specifically to deploying vS phere on NetApp. Therefore, the contents of this document supersede all recommendations and best practices expressed in ot her versions of TR-3705. Note: Data ONTAP Version 7.3. 1P2 or greater is required to implement the NetApp vS phere plug-ins.

In addition to this document, NetApp and our partners offer professional services to architect and deploy the designs contained within this document. These services can be an attractive means to enable optimal virtual storage archit ecture for your virtual data center.
1.2
WHATS NEW
In this version of the technical report, we updated sections that cover best practices focused on improving solution scale, performance, and management of VMware View Composers Linked Clones. While the concept of how NetA pp can deduplicate data on disk and then amplify the cache remains the same, the term Transparent Storage Cache Sharing has been replaced with the updated language of Virtual Storage Tiering (VS T). This provides a simpler way of understanding how NetApp can achieve the performance of using multiple tiers without actually having to carve up and manage separate tiers of storage.
1.3
AUDIENCE
The target audience for this paper is familiar with concepts pertaining to VMware vSphere, including VMware ES X 4, VMware vCenter Server 4, and NetApp Data ONTAP 7.3.1.P2 or greater. For high-level information and an overview of the unique benefits that are available when creating a virtual infrastructure on NetApp storage, see Comprehensive Virtual Desktop Deployment with VMware and NetApp.
2 SCOPE
The scope of this document is to provide architectural, deployment, and management guidelines for customers that are planning or have already decided to implement VMware View on NetApp virtualized storage. It provides a brief overview of the VMware View technology concepts; key solution architecture considerations for implementing VMware View on NetApp; storage estimation and data lay out recommendations; and solution, deployment, and management guidelines.
3 INTRODUCTION TO VMW ARE VIEW

Corporate IT departments are facing a new class of desktop management issues as they strive to provide end users with the flexibility of accessing corporate IT res ources using any device from any net work. IT is also being asked to provide access to corporat e resources for an increasingly dispersed and growing audience that includes workers in off-site facilities, contractors, partners, and outsourcing providers as well as employees traveling or working from home. All of these groups demand access to sensitive corporate resources, but IT must make sure of strict adherence to corporate security requirements and new regulatory standards. VDI enables organiz ations to increase corporate IT control, manageability, and flexibility of desktop resources while providing end users with a familiar desktop experience. VMware View is an enterpriseclass solution to deliver corporate PC services to end users. VMware View 4 solution components might include but are not limited to: Virtualization hy pervisor (VMware ES X 4.0) Tool for cent ralized management, automation, provisioning, and optimization (VMware vCenter, NetApp VS C 2.0, VMware View Composer) Connection brok er and desktop management (VMware View 4.5) Virtualized desktop images (Windows XP, Windows Vista , Windows 7, and so on) Enhanced Windows profile and dat a management solutions (for example, Liquidware Labs ProfileUnity and AppSense) Thin client/PC (for example, Wyse, DevonIT)

VMware View 4.5, based on the proven VMware vSphere virtualization plat form, delivers unique desktop control and manageability, while providing end users with a familiar desktop experience without any modifications to the desktop environment or applications.
4 VMW ARE VIEW POOLS

VMware has created the concept of desktop pools. Policies and entitlements are set for each pool such that all desktops within that pool follow the same provisioning, login/logoff behavior, display, dat a persistence, and patching rules. The two types of desktops are manual and automatic pools. For any customer environment, these pooled desktops can be classified as either dedicated or floating. Dedicated (persi stent) de sktops: Dedicated desktops can be defined as desktops that are permanently assigned to a single user and are customizable; no other user is entitled to use such a desktop. The user logs into the same desktop every day, and the changes made to the system image (new dat a, applications, registry changes) are saved across login sessions and reboots. This is exactly like a traditional lapt op or desktop, with all the customizations and personal data stored locally on the C drive. This model might, however, include the use of CIFS home directories and/or profile redirection for better us er data and profile management. This is a common type of VDI deployment model that is used today for knowledge workers, mobile workers, and power users and is a major driver for increased shared storage requirement. Floating (nonpersi stent) desktops: Floating desktops can be defined as desktops that are not assigned to a specific user. The user could get assigned to a different virtual desktop at every login.
This deployment model could be used for task workers or shift work ers (for example, call centers work ers, tellers, students, or medic al professionals) and some knowledge workers who require little control of their desktops. One might choose to implement either of thes e models or a mix based on the business requirements, types of users, and proportion of us ers repres ented by different job functions.
4.1
VMWARE VIEW DESKTOP DELIVERY MODELS
VMware View Manager is the VMware virtual desktop management solution that improves control and manageability and provides a familiar desktop experience.
Figure 1) VMware View features (source: VMware).
At a high level, there are multiple pool types in VMware View: Manual desktop pool s: This pool type provides the assignment of multiple users to multiple desktops, with only one active user on a desktop at a time. These types of desktops must be manually precreated with using VMware full clones or tools with space-efficient VM provisioning capabilities, for example, the NetApp VSC Provisioning and Cloning plug-in, and can be aut omatically imported into VMware View. The manual desktop pool supports two types of user assignment: Dedicated assignment: Users are assigned a desktop that can retain all of their documents, applications, and settings bet ween sessions. The desktop is statically assigned the first time the user connects and is then used for all subsequent sessions. Floating assignment: Us ers are not assigned to particular desktops and could get connected to a different desktop from the pool each time they connect. Also, there is no data persistence of profile or user data between sessions without using third party software or roaming profiles.
Automated desktop pool s: This pool type provides the assignment of multiple users to multiple desktops, with only one active user on a desktop at a time. The creation and customization of these types of desktops are performed by VMware View and optionally with VMware View Composer by using either of these two options: Full clone: Leveraging VMware vCenter virtual machine template to create VMware full clones. Linked clone: Leveraging VMware View Composer feat ure in VMware View 4.5 to creat e VMware linked clones. Dedicated assignment: Users are assigned a desktop that can retain all of their documents, applications, and settings bet ween sessions. The desktop is statically assigned the first time the user connects and is then used for all subsequent sessions. Floating assignment: Us ers are not assigned to particular desktops and could get connected to a different desktop from the pool each time they connect. Also, there is no persistence of environmental or us er data bet ween sessions.
Both options in automat ed desktop pools support the two types of us er assignment:
Terminal server pool: This is a pool of terminal server desktop sources served by one or more terminal servers. Discussion on the storage best practices for this type of desktop delivery model is outside the scope of this document.
Table 1) Typical provisioning, data persistence, and user assignment for each pool type.
Pool Type Manual Desktop Pool Automated Desktop Pool
Provisioning Method NetApp VSC 2.0 Provisioning and Cloning Plug-in VMware Full Clones VMware View Composer Linked Clones
Desktop Data Persistence
User Assignment
Persistent/Nonpersistent Dedicated/Floating
Persistent/Nonpersistent Dedicated/Floating Persistent/ Nonpersistent Dedicated/Floating
While each type of clone can be used in all persistence and assignment types, the methods marked in bold represent the typical and most recommended methods for deployment. For more details on VMware View desktop pools and user assignment, refer to the VMware View Manager Administrator Guide.
5 NETAPP SOLUTION AND COMPONENTS

NetApp provides a scalable, unified storage and data management solution for VMware View. The unique benefits of the NetApp solution are: Storage efficiency: Significant cost savings with multiple levels of storage efficiency for all the VM data components. Performance: Enhanced user experience with Virtual Storage Tiering and write I/O optimization that strongly complements NetApps storage efficiency capabilities. Operational agility: Enhanced VMware View solution management wit h tight part ner integration. Data protection: Enhanced protection of both the virtual desktop OS data and the user data, with very low overhead for both cost and operations.
5.1
SINGLE SCALABLE UNIFIED ARCHITECTURE
The NetApp unified storage architecture provides customers with an agile and scalable storage plat form. NetApps innovative storage solutions provide customers new alt ernatives and expanded possibilities over traditional storage vendors. All NetApp storage systems utilize the Data ONTAP operating system to provide SAN (FCoE, FC, iSCS I), NAS (CIFS, NFS), primary storage, and secondary storage within a single unified plat form so that all virtual desktop data components can be hosted on the same storage array. A single process for activities such as installation, provisioning, mirroring, backup, and upgrading is used throughout the entire product line from the entry level to enterprise-class controllers. Having a single set of software and processes brings great simplicity to even the most complex ent erprise dat a management challenges. Unifying storage and data management software and proc esses reduces the complexity of dat a ownership, enables companies to adapt to their changing business needs without interruption, and results in a dramatic reduction in total cost of ownership. For large, scalable VMware View environments, the NetA pp solution provides the following unique benefits: At least 50% savings in storage, power, and cooling requirements Most agile and operationally efficient storage solutions Best-in-class data protection and business continuance solutions to address any level of data availability demands
5.2
STORAGE EFFICIENCY
One of the critical barriers to VDI adoption is the increased cost of using shared storage to obtain a highly available enterprise quality infrastructure. Virtual desktop deployment creat es a high level of data redundancy, especially for the VM OS dat a. Using traditional storage, this means you need storage equal to the sum of the storage required by each VM. For example, if each VM is 20GB in size and there are supposed to be 1000 VMs in the solution, it would require at least 20TB usable data on the shared storage. Thin provisioning, data deduplication, and Flex Clone are the critical components of the NetApp solution and offer multiple levels of storage efficiency across the virtual desktop OS data, installed applications, and user dat a. This helps customers save on average 50% to 90% on the cost associated with shared storage (bas ed on existing customer deployments and NetApp solutions lab validation). NetApp is the only storage vendor that offers block-level dat a deduplication for live virtual mac hines, without any negative tradeoffs. THIN PROVISIONING Thin provisioning is a way of logically presenting more storage to hosts than physically available. With thin provisioning, the storage administrator is able to utilize a pool of physical disks (known as an aggregate) and create logical volumes for different applications to use, while not preallocating space to those volumes. The space gets allocated only when the host needs it. The unus ed aggregate space is available for the existing thinly provisioned volumes to expand or for use in creation of new volumes. For more details on thin provisioning, review NetApp TR-3563: NetApp Thin Provisioning.
Figure 2) Traditional and thin provisioning.
Traditional Provisioning
400 GB Allocated & Unused
Thin Provisioning
400 GB Available to Other Applications
Pre-allocated Physical Storage 100GB Actual Data
Storage On Demand 100GB Actual Data
Figure 3) Increased disk utilization with NetApp thin provisioning.
NETAPP DEDUPLICATION NetApp deduplication saves space on primary storage by removing redundant copies of blocks within a volume hosting hundreds of virtual desktops. This process is transparent to the application and us er and can be enabled and disabled on the fly. In a VMware View environment, deduplication provides signific ant space savings, given that each VM is an identical copy of the OS, applications, and patches. Note that not all data within a VDI environment is ideal for deduplication. Data such as swap and other transient data should not be deduplicated. Deduplication is also ideal for user and persona (profile) data stored in CIFS home directories. For more information on NetApp deduplication, refer to NetApp TR-3505: NetApp Deduplication for FAS, Deployment and Implementation Guide.
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NetApp and VMware Vie w Solution Guid e: Best Practices f or Design, Architecture, Deploy ment, and Management
Figure 4) NetApp deduplication.
Before
FLEX CLONE
After
NetApp FlexClone technology is hardware-assisted rapid creation of space-efficient, writable, point-intime images of individual files, LUNs, or flexible volumes. The use of FlexClone technology in VMware View deployments provides high levels of scalability and significant cost, space, and time savings. Both file-level cloning and volume-level cloning are tightly integrat ed with the VMware vCenter Server using the NetApp Virtual Storage Console (VS C) Provisioning and Cloning vCenter plug-in. The VSC provides the flexibility to provision and redeploy thousands of VMs rapidly with hundreds of VMs in each datastore. Note that from a scalability and manageability perspective, this allows for very few datastores to provision and manage as compared to other solutions, which might require one datastore per VM. FlexClone adds a new level of agility and efficiency to storage operations. FlexClone volumes take only seconds to create and are nondisruptive to the parent FlexVol volume or VM. FlexClone copies share the same physical data space as the sourc e and occupy negligible space (metadat a) on the storage system. FlexClone file-level or volume-level clones use space very efficiently, leveraging the Dat a ONTAP architecture to store only data that changes bet ween the source and clone. In addition to all these benefits, file-level or volume-level Flex Clone volumes have the same high performance as other FlexVol volumes or files hosted on the volumes. Also, FlexClone technology provides significant benefits with disaster recovery (DR) testing. DR testing wit h FlexClone is safe, risk free, and can be done during operational hours at any time. For more information on FlexClone technology concepts, see NetApp TR3347: FlexClone Volumes: A Thorough Introduction.
5.3
PERFORMANCE
Another critical barrier to VMware View adoption is performance issues associated with hosting thousands of VMs on shared storage, specifically performanc e associated with events that produce a large influx of simultaneous I/O such as login storms, boot storms, and antivirus operations. With physical desktops, this was not a problem as each machine had its own disks and I/ O was contained within a single desktop. With VMware View using a shared storage infrastructure, significant performance issues might arise during these critical operations. This essentially means the solution would require a large number of additional spindles to meet the performanc e requirements, resulting in increased overall solution cost. To solve this problem, the NetA pp solution contains Virtual Storage Tiering. Virtual Storage Tiering is a core component of Data ONTAP and is extended with Flash Cac he (formerly PAM II). These solution components save customers money by: Requiring far less disks and cache Not requiring tiers of SSD disk to alleviate boot and login storms
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Serving read data from cache freeing up disk I/O to perform writes Providing better throughput and system utilization Providing faster response times and a better overall end user ex perience
VIRTUAL STORAGE TI ERING Virtual Storage Tiering allows customers to benefit from NetApps storage efficiency and at the same time significantly increase I/ O performance. VS T is natively built into the Data ONTAP operating system and works by leveraging block-sharing technologies such as NetApp primary storage deduplication and file/ volume FlexClone to reduce the amount of cache required and eliminate duplicate disk reads. Only one instance of any duplicate block is read int o cache, thus requiring less cache than traditional storage solutions. Because VMware View implementations can see as great as 99% initial space savings (validated in the NetApp solutions lab during a 50,000-seat buildout) using NetApp space-efficient cloning technologies, this translates into higher cache deduplication and high cache hit rates. VST is especially effective in addressing the simultaneous system boot or boot storm and login of hundreds to thousands of virtual desktop systems that can overload a traditional legacy storage system. FLASH CACHE NetApp Flash Cache is a hardware device that extends the native Data ONTAP VST capabilities. Flash Cache increases the amount of available cache which helps reduce virtual desktop storm activities. More details of Flash Cac he are discussed later in this document. For more details on NetApp Flash Cache technology, visit www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/flash-c ache/flash-cac he-t ech-specs.html . Note: For the remainder of this document, the use of Flash Cache represents both the Flash Cache and PAM modules.
FLEXIBLE VOLUMES AND AGGREGATES Flexible volumes (also known as FlexVol volumes) and aggregates provide pools of storage. This storage virtualization allows the performance and capacity to be shared by all desktops in the volume or aggregate. Much like the way that VMware virtualizes computing resources, NetApp virtualizes the storage resources.
5.4
OPERATIONAL AGILITY
Implementation and management complexities associated with deploying a VMware View solution are another potential barrier to VDI adoption. The NetApp management solution is operationally agile and provides tight integration with VMware vCenter for rapidly provisioning, managing, configuring, and backing up a VMware View implement ation. This section discusses the components of the NetApp plug-in framework for vSphere, the Virtual Storage Console. VIRTUAL STORAGE CONSOLE 2.0 (VSC) The NetApp Virtual Storage Console 2.0 (VS C) for VMware vS phere enables one to manage ES X and ES Xi servers connected to NetApp storage systems. VSC is a plug-in to the VMware vCenter that is available to all vSphere clients that connect to the vCenter server. The core function of the VSC allows VMware administrators the ability to configure best practice HBA/CNA timeout values, MPIO settings, and NFS settings; monitor storage capacity and deduplication savings; and collect data for troubleshooting.
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Figure 5) NetApp VSC plug-in.
PROVISIONING AND CLONING PLUG-IN (V 3.1) The NetApp VSC Provisioning and Cloning plug-in v3.1 provides customers with the ability to rapidly provision, manage, import, and redeploy thousands of VMs. This plug-in leverages file and volume FlexClone technologies, discussed earlier, to create hardware-assisted clones. It is tightly integrated into VMware vCenter as a module of the NetApp VSC 2.0 and can automatically import VMs directly into VMware View 4.5. Once provisioned, the Provisioning and Cloning plug-in can redeploy VMs after patches have been applied to the baseline image. The plug-in also allows VMware administrators the ability to initiate, view, and control deduplication; configure and provision new datastores for NFS, iSCS I, and Fibre Channel and FCoE protocols; resize existing NFS datastores; and destroy datastores. With the provisioning and cloning capabilities of the VSC 2.0, customers are able to achieve the desired storage efficiency, rapid provisioning, and patch management associated with both dedicated and floating user assignment and persistent and nonpersistent desktops and still be able to achieve performance acceleration with VS T.
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Figure 6) NetApp Provisioning and Cloning plug-in in VMware vCenter.
BACKUP AND RECOV ERY PLUG-I N The NetApp VSC Backup and Recovery plug-in (formerly SMVI) is a unique, scalable data protection plug-in for VMware vS phere and the VMware View solution. The Backup and Recovery plug-in is now distributed as a part of the Virtual Storage Console 2.0. It integrat es VMware snaps hot functionality with NetApp S napshot to protect VMware View environments. More information is available in the data protection section of this document. SANS CREEN VM INSIGHT Also available as a VMware vCenter plug-in, NetA pp SANscreen VM Insight also provides cross-domain visibility from the VM to the shared storage, allowing both storage and server administration teams to more easily manage their VMware View storage and server infrastructure. VM Insight provides servicelevel information for virtual servers, physical servers, and storage devices, as well as VM volume, allocated capacity, and datastore information from VMware vCenter. Based on this visibility, VM Insight shows the actual service paths and server performance information to allow end-to-end monitoring. The enterprise-class data warehouse provides IT the ability to access, query, and analyze VM data; and, when deployed with SANscreen Capacity Manager, it enables capacity planning and chargeback for VM environments. For further details, see SANscreen VM Insight.
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Figure 7) NetApp SANscreen VM Insight plug-in in VMware vCenter.
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OPERATIONS MANAGER NetApp Operations Manager provides a comprehensive monitoring and management solution for the VMware View storage infrastructure. It provides comprehensive reports of utilization and trends for capacity planning and space us age. It also monitors system performance, storage capacity, and health to resolve potential problems. For furt her details on Operations Manager, visit the following solutions page: www.net app.com/us/products/management-software/ operations-manager.html.
Figure 8) NetApp Operations Manager.
5.5
DAT A PROTECTION
The availability of thousands of virtual desktops is dependent on the availability of the shared storage on which the virtual desktops are hosted. Thus, using the proper RAID technology is very critical. Also, being able to protect the virtual desktop images and/or user data is very import ant. RAID-DP , the VSC 2.0s Backup and Recovery plug-in, NetApp SnapMirror , and NetApp Snapshot copies are critical components of the NetApp solution that help address storage availability. RAI D-DP With any VMware View deployment, data protection is critical, because any RAID failure could result in hundreds to thousands of end users being disconnected from their desktops, resulting in lost productivity. RAID-DP provides performanc e that is comparable to that of RA ID 10, yet requires fewer disks to achieve equivalent protection. RA ID-DP provides prot ection against double disk failure as compared to RAID 5,
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which can only prot ect against one disk failure per RA ID group. For more information on RAID-DP, see NetApp TR-3298: RA ID-DP: NetApp Implementation of RA ID Double Parity for Dat a Protection. BACKUP AND RECOV ERY PLUG-I N The NetApp Backup and Recovery plug-in for VS C 2.0 is a unique, scalable, integrated data protection solution for protecting VMware View environments. The Backup and Recovery plug-in allows customers the ability to leverage VMware snapshot functionality with NetApp array-based block-level Snapshot copies to provide consistent backups for the virtual desktops. The Backup and Recovery plug-in is integrated with NetApp SnapMirror replication technology, which preserves the deduplicated storage savings from the source to the destination storage array. Deduplication is then not required to be rerun on the destination storage array. Additionally, when a VMware View environment is replicated with SnapMirror, the replicated data can be quickly brought online to provide production access in the event of a site or data center out age. Also, SnapMirror is fully integrat ed with VMware Site Rec overy Manager (SRM) and NetApp FlexClone technology to instantly create zero-cost writable copies of the replicated virtual desktops at the remote site that can be used for DR testing or for test and development work. For more information on SnapMirror, see NetApp TR-3446: SnapMirror Best Practices Guide. For more information on VMware SRM integration, see NetApp TR-3671: VMware Site Recovery Manager in a NetApp E nvironment. For more detailed information on the Backup and Rec overy plug-in, see NetApp TR-3737: SMVI Best Practices.
Figure 9) NetApp Backup and Recovery plug-in.
6 NETAPP AND VMW ARE VIEW DESKTOP POOLS

There are two primary virtual desktop pool types available in VMware View 4.5: Manual desktop pool Automated desktop pool
Both the manual desktop pool and automated desktop pool models offer the ability to be randomly or statically assigned (dedicated and floating). Automated desktop pool offers two options in which virtual desktops can be provisioned: using VMware full clones and VMware View Composer linked clones.
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Considering the flexibility in this architecture, there are a total of six ways in which virtual desktops can be provisioned and managed with VMware View: Manual desktop pool wit h dedic ated assignment Manual desktop pool wit h floating assignment Automated desktop pool, leveraging VMware full clones with dedicated assignment Automated desktop pool, leveraging VMware full clones with floating assignment Automated desktop pool, leveraging VMware linked clones with dedicated assignment Automated desktop pool, leveraging VMware linked clones with floating assignment
Most businesses have a mix of worker types (for example, finance, HR, engineering, help desk, call centers, teleworkers, data entry operators, and so on), and each use case might require one or more of these six ways in which the virtual desktops can be provisioned and managed. Based on the requirements and mix of user profiles, companies might choose to implement one or more of these pools. For example, a company requirement might dictate a need for the following mix of desktop types: 10% individual desktops (for example, kiosks, part-time workers) 40% manual desktop pool with dedicated assignment (for example, management staff, human resources, analysts, R&D) 20% automated desktop pool, utilizing VMware full clones with dedicated assignment (for example, software developers) 30% automated desktop pool, utilizing VMware linked clones wit h floating assignment (for example, help desk represent atives)
Considering this to be a real-world scenario, the desktop mix might vary over time as more and more desktops are virtualized. However, the ultimat e objective is to make sure that the complete end-to-end solution that is implemented can be easily managed, be cost effective, and provide a best-in-class enduser experience. The NetApp value proposition of storage efficiency, performance, operational agility, and data protection strongly complements all these six ways in which virtual desktops can be deployed and managed, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2) NetApp value proposition.
VMware View Desktop Pool Type Provisioning Method User Assignment
NetApp and VMware Solution Storage Efficiency OS Data User Data Performance Operational Agility Data Protection
Manual Pool
NetApp VSC Provisioning and Cloning Capability VMware View Composer (Full Clones) VMware View Composer (Linked Clones)
Dedicated Floating Dedicated Floating Dedicated Floating
Automated Pool
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Let us go into the details of each of the VMware View desktop pool types and us er assignment types and validate how the NetApp solution strongly complements each one of them to achieve your ultimate goals and objectives. Note that data such as vSwap and the Linked Clone Dat astore, including Disposable File Disk, should not be deduplicated because they contain a considerable amount of transient data that is created and destroyed frequently.
6.1
MANUAL DESKTOP POOL
If you are planning to implement manual desktop pool as part of the solution, you might choose to implement either the dedicated or floating user assignment. For both of thes e types of user assignments, the desired storage efficiency for the VM OS data (50% to 90%) and user data (up to 50%) can be achieved using the NetApp thin provisioning, deduplication, and Flex Clone components of the solution. Note that the NetApp best practice is to store the user data and profile in a CIFS share on a NetApp NAS volume using a profile management solution. One such solution is Liquidware Labs Profile Unity. This might also be accomplished with Microsoft roaming profiles and/or folder redirection. This allows enhanced data management and protection of the user and profile dat a. NetApp write I/O optimization and virtual storage tiering help achieve the desired end-user experience. Space-efficient VMs can be rapidly created or redeployed and imported int o VMware View using the VSC Provisioning and Cloning plug-in. Effective solution monitoring, management, and data protection can be achieved using VM Insight, Operations Manager, VSCs Backup and Restore plug-in, SnapVault , SnapMirror, and RAID-DP.
Table 3) Manual desktop pool.
VMware View Pool Type Cloning Method User Assignment
NetApp and VMware Solution Storage Efficiency Clone Datastore User Data Write I/O Optimization VST Flash Cache VSC Provisioning and Cloning VM Insight Operations Manager VSC Backup and Recovery Performance Management Data Protection
Manual Pool
Dedicated NetApp VSC Floating Provisionin g and Cloning Capability
CIFS Thin Provisioning Thin Dedupe Provisioning Dedupe
RAID-DP VSC Backup and Recovery SnapMirror SnapVault
6.2
AUTOMATED DESKTOP POOL
If you are planning to implement aut omated desktop pools as part of the solution, you might choose to implement a VMware full clone solution, a VMware linked clone solution, or a mix of the two. VMWARE FULL CLONE This solution supports use of both dedicat ed and floating user assignment. With both of these types of user assignments, the desired storage efficiency for the VM OS data (50% to 90%) and user data (up to 50%) can be achieved using NetApp thin provisioning and deduplication components of the solution. Note that the NetApp best practice is to store the user data and profile in a CIFS share on a NetApp NAS volume using a profile management solution. One such solution is Liquidware Labs Profile Unity. This might also be accomplished with Microsoft roaming profiles and/ or folder redirection. This allows enhanced data management and protection of the user and profile dat a. NetApp write I/O optimization and Virtual Storage Tiering help achieve the desired end-user ex perience. Effective solution monitoring,
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management, and data protection can be achieved using VM Insight, Operations Manager, VSCs Backup and Recovery plug-in, SnapVault, SnapMirror, and RAID-DP.
Table 4) VMware View Composer Full Clone.
VMware View Pool Type Cloning Method
NetApp and VMware Solution Storage Efficiency User Assignment Clone Data User Data Stores CIFS Thin Provisioning Thin Dedupe Provisioning Dedupe User Data Disk Performance Management Data Protection
Automated VMware Dedicated Desktop View Floating Pool Compose r Full Clone
Write I/O Optimization VST Flash Cache
VSC Provisioning and Cloning VM Insight Operations Manager VSC Backup and Recovery
RAID-DP VSC Backup and Recovery SnapMirror SnapVault
VMWARE LINKED CLONE The VMware linked clone solution also supports both the persistent and nonpersistent access modes. For persistent access mode, the desired storage efficiency (50% to 90%) for the VM OS data disk can be achieved using VMware link ed clones and NetApp thin provisioning components of the solution. The storage efficiency for the user data disk (up to 50% ) can be achieved using NetApp deduplication and thin provisioning. Note that the NetApp best practice is to store the user data and profile in a CIFS share on a NetApp NAS volume using a profile management solution. One such solution is Liquidware Labs Profile Unity. This might also be accomplished with Micros oft roaming profiles and/or folder redirection. This allows enhanced data management and prot ection of the user and profile data. For nonpersistent access mode, the desired storage efficiency (50% to 90% ) for the VM OS data disk can be achieved using VMware linked clones and NetApp thin provisioning components of the solution. The storage efficiency (up to 50% ) for the user data can be achieved using NetApp deduplication and thin provisioning. Note that the NetApp best practice is to store the user data and profile in a CIFS share on a NetApp NAS volume using a profile management solution. One such solution is Liquidware Labs Profile Unity. This might also be accomplished with Micros oft roaming profiles and/or folder redirection. This allows enhanced data management and prot ection of the user and profile data.
For both persistent and nonpersistent access modes, NetApp write I/O optimization and Virtual Storage Tiering help enhance the end-user experience. Effective solution monitoring, management, and data protection can be ac hieved by using Liquidware Labs Stratusphere UX, VM Insight, Operations Manager, VSC Backup and Recovery, SnapV ault, SnapMirror, and RA ID-DP.
Table 5) VMware View Composer Linked Clones.
VMware View Pool Type Cloning Method
NetApp and VMware Solution Storage Efficiency User Assignment Template or User Data Replica Datastores Performance Managemen Data t Protection
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VMware View Dedicated Automated VMware Desktop View Floating Pool Composer (Linked Clones)
NetApp and VMware Solution Thin Provisioning Dedupe CIFS Thin Provisioning Dedupe Write I/O Optimization VST Flash Cache VM Insight Operations Manager VSC Backup and Recovery RAID-DP VSC Backup and Recovery SnapVault SnapMirror
VMware View 4.5 introduced the storage tiering for View Composer Linked Clones. This technology allows administrators to separate the replica disk (the C:\ Drive) from the Linked Clone data (new writes). The linked clone datastore contains the delta file where new writes are stored and the disposable file disk where the c:\temp file and c:\pagefile.sys are stored. The linked clone datastores should not be deduplicated because they contain transient data, which is creat ed and destroyed frequently. Maintenance is required to achieve storage efficiency and performance of the delta disk. The frequency of maintenance is determined by the amount of data growth and performance requirements of the environment. Additionally, a reboot can be performed to remove the dat a stored within the disposable file disk. For more information on how to perform the refresh operations, refer to the VMware View Manager Administrator Guide. Using VMware Storage Tiering with NetApp VS T, it is not necessary to place each data type on different physical tiers of storage because VS T alleviat es the need for physical tiering and allows some or all of the data to use the Flas h Cache and accelerate data access. Linked Clone replicas can also be pinned to Flash Cache using FlexShare as described in section 7.6 under FlexShare.
Figure 10) VMware View linked clone data la yout using NetApp VST.
To summariz e, a NetApp solution strongly complements all the desktop delivery models and user access modes in VMware View to provide a highly cost-effective, high-performing, operationally agile, and integrated VMware View solution.
7 ACCELERATING VMW ARE VIEW WITH READ AND WRITE I/O OPTIMIZATION
7.1 CONCEPTS
Virtual desktops can be both read and writ e intensive at different times during the lifecycle of the desktop, depending on the user activity and the desktop maintenance cycle. The performance-intensive activities are experienced by most large-scale deployments and are referred to as storm activities such as:
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Boot storms
Login storms Virus scan and/or definition update storms
A boot storm is an event when some or all virtual desktops boot simultaneously, creating a large spike in I/O. This can happen as a result of rolling out mass OS updat es and having to reboot, desktop redeploy operations, new application installation, maintenance windows, server failures, or any number of practical issues or interruptions. Daily login storms and virus scan storms also creat e similar I/O spikes. In the physical world this was never a problem as each mac hine had a single disk, and boot, login, and virus scanning did not affect other users. With virtual desktops using a shared infrastructure, these peaks in I/O affect the entire desktop environment. The environment needs to be able to handle both the read- and write-intensive scenarios in the desktop lifecycle. The typical methods for addressing these peaks are: Increase cache for both ES X servers and storage devices Increase the spindle count Increase the number of storage arrays
The NetApp and VMware View solution addresses these challenges in a unique way, with no negative tradeoffs to the customer environment. The NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering in Data ONTAP, Flash Cache, write I/O optimization by coalescing multiple client write I/O operations as a single disk I/O, FlexClone, and deduplication are key components of the NetApp and VMware View solution. NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering helps customers reduce the physical storage requirement, allowing customers to size their virtual desktop infrastructures for normal operations and not for the peaks. Note: NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering eliminates the requirement for a large number of spindles to handle the bursty read-intensive operations, while NetApp FlexClone and deduplication can further reduce the number of spindles required to store data, thus allowing customers to reduce capex.
7.2
NETAPP WRITE OPTIMIZATION
Virtual desktop I/O patterns are oft en very random in nat ure. Random writes are the most expensive operation for almost all RAID types because each write operation requires more than one disk operation. The ratio of V DI client operation to disk operation also depends on the RA ID type for the back-end storage array. In a RAID 5 configuration on a traditional storage array, each client write operation requires up to four disk operations. Large write cache might help, but traditional storage arrays still require at least two disk operations. (Some coalescing of requests happens if you have a big enough write cache. Also, there is a chance that one of the reads might come from read cache. ) In a RAID 10 configuration, each client write operation requires two disk operations. The cost of RAID 10 is very high compared to RA ID 5. However, RAID 5 offers lower resiliency (prot ection against single disk failure). Imagine dual disk failure in the middle of the day, making hundreds to thousands of users unproductive. With NetApp, write operations have been optimized for RAID-DP by the core operating system Data ONTAP and WAFL since their invention. NetApp arrays coalesce multiple client write operations and send them to disk as a single IOP. Therefore, the ratio of client operations to disk operations is always less than 1, as compared to traditional storage arrays with RA ID 5 or RA ID 10, which require at least 2x disk operations per client operation. Also, RAID-DP provides the desired resiliency (protection against dual disk failure) and performance, comparable to RA ID 10 but at the cost of RA ID 5.
7.3
BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING
The following are some of the key benefits of Virtual Storage Tiering: Increased performance: With Virtual Storage Tiering, in combination with FlexClone and deduplication, latencies decrease significantly by a factor of 10x versus serving data from the fastest spinning disks available, giving submillisecond data access. Decreasing the latency results in higher throughput and lower disk utilization, which directly translate into fewer disk reads.
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Lowering TCO: Requiring fewer disks and getting better performance allow customers to increase the number of virtual machines on a given storage plat form, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership. Green benefits: Power and cooling costs are reduced as the overall energy needed to run and cool the Flash Cache module is significantly less than even a single shelf of Fibre Channel disks. A standard DS 14mk4 disk shelf of 300GB 15K RPM disks can consume as much as 340 watts W/h and generate heat up to 1394B TU/h In contrast, the Flash Cache module consumes only a mere 18W/h and generates 90B TU/h By not deploying a single shelf, the power savings alone can be as much as 3000kWh/year per shelf. In addition to the environmental benefits of heating and cooling, each shelf not used saves 3U of rack space. For a real-world deployment, a NetApp solution (with Flash Cache as a key component) would typically replace several such storage shelves; therefore, the savings could be considerably higher than comparing to one disk shelf.
Figure 11) Power and heat savings for Flash Cache compared to one FC 15K disk shelf.
95% Less Power Used
94% Less Heat
7.4
DEDUPLICATION AND NONDUPLICATION TECHNOLOGIES
Using NetApp deduplication and file FlexClone not only can reduce the overall storage footprint of VMware View desktops but also can improve performance by leveraging Virtual Storage Tiering. Data that is deduplicat ed or nonduplicated, in the case of file FlexClone data, on disk only exists in storage array cache once per volume. All subsequent reads from any of the VM disks (VMDKs) of a block that is already in cache reads from cache and not from disk, therefore improving performance by 10x. Any nondeduplicated dat a that is not in cache must be read from disk. Data that is deduplicated but does not have as many block references as a heavily deduped VMDK appears in cache only once but based on the frequency of access might be evicted earlier than data that has many references or is heavily used.
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Figure 12) NetApp deduplication in VMware environments.
INODE
INODE
INODE
INODE
INODE
INODE
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
INDIRECT
Data Blocks Deduplication within VMware Environments

VMware View deployments can reduce storage footprint by up to 99%. This diagram demonstrates the initial deployment where all blocks are duplicate blocks.
DEDUPLICATION GUI DELINES Deduplication is configured and operates on the flexible volumes only. Data can be deduplicated up to 255:1 without consuming additional space. Each storage plat form has different deduplication limits. Each volume has dense and nondense size limits. Deduplication is configured using the command line. Requires Data ONTAP 7.2.5.1, 7.3P 1, or later. Both a_sis and NearStore must be licensed for deduplication to work. Run deduplication prior to creating Snapshot copies or running SnapMirror or SnapV ault updates.
Table 6) Deduplication Recommendations for different data types.
Datastore Type Template Datastore Replica Datastore (c:\) Linked Clone Datastore (Delta) User Data Disk VMware View Composer Full Clone NetApp VSC Provisioned Clones vSwap
Enable Deduplication Yes Yes No Yes Yes* Yes* No
Clone Type All VMware Linked Clones VMware Linked Clones VMware Linked Clones Full Clones NetApp Full Clones All
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* The schedule for deduplicating full clones regardless of provisioning method might vary based on amount of change within the virtual machine. More frequent deduplication might be required to shorten the deduplication process. It is recommended that the deduplication process be monitored and adjusted to fit the replication and backup requirements. For more detailed information on deduplication, refer to NetApp TR-3505: NetApp Deduplication for FAS, Deployment and Implement ation Guide.
7.5
CACHING MODULES
FLASH CACHE Flash Cache is a PCI Express card that can be installed in FAS3070, V3070, FAS3100, V3100, FAS6000, and V6000 series plat forms running Dat a ONTAP 7.3. 2 or higher. Each module cont ains either 256GB or 512GB of SLC NA ND Flash. The VMware View solution can be compos ed of two (512GB) to eight (4TB) Flash Cache devices per FAS or V-Series storage cluster depending on the customer requirements. Details on the number of modules per plat form can be found at www.net app.com/us/products/storage-systems/performance-acceleration-module/performanceacceleration-tec h-specs.html.
7.6
TRADITIONAL AND VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING
Virtual Storage Tiering is performed natively within Data ONTAP and can be extended with the use of Flash Cache. Flash Cache is the hardware component; the soft ware component is called FlexScale . This section describes these components and the NetApp best practices to use them in a VMware View environment. TRADITIONAL LEGACY STORAGE ARRAYS With traditional legacy storage arrays, there is no data or cache deduplication and thus for best performance the amount of cache needed should be equal to or great er than the working set size. This leads to requiring eit her large amounts of cache or more spindles to satisfy peak workloads such as boot, login, or virus storms.
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Figure 13) Traditional legacy storage array caching.
VIRTUAL STORAGE TI ERING IN DATA ONTAP Data ONTAP only stores a single block on disk and in cache for up to 255 physical blocks per volume, thus requiring fewer spindles and less cache than legacy storage arrays. Data ONTAP Virtual Storage Tiering is available in all versions of Data ONTAP 7. 3.1 or higher. This means that Virtual Storage Tiering can be used in every FAS, V-Series, and IBM N Series that supports Data ONTAP 7.3.1 and blocksharing technologies (for example, deduplication and Flex Clone volumes).
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Figure 14) Cache and data deduplication with NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering.
ESX Cluster VM VM VM VM
Datastore
Cache & Data Deduplication
VM Dedupe Aware Cache
VM Disk Storage NetApp FAS Array
HOW DATA ONTAP VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING FUNCTIONS When a data block is requested, Data ONTAP reads the block into main memory (also known as WAFL buffer cache). If that data block is a deduplicat ed block, in that it has multiple files referencing the same physical block, each subsequent read of that same physical block comes from cache as long as it has not been evicted from cache. Heavily referenc ed blocks that are frequently read reside in cache longer than blocks that have fewer references or less frequent access. The effects this has are that since main memory can be accessed much more quickly than disk, latency is decreased, disk utilization is decreased, and network throughput is increased, thus improving overall performanc e and end-user experience.
Figure 15) Virtual Storage Tiering with data de duplication.
YES YES
VMware ESX
Is the deduped block in main memory?
NO
Read data block from disk
NetApp FAS Array

27 NetApp and VMware Vie w Solution Guid e: Best Practices f or Design, Architecture, Deploy ment, and Management
HOW DATA ONTAP VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING FUNCTIONS WITH FLASH CACHE Virtual Storage Tiering can be extended wit h the use of Flash Cache. As long as that block has not been evicted from both caches, all subsequent reads are performed from main memory or Flash Cache, thus improving performance by not having to go to disk. Again, the more heavily the data is deduplicated and more frequently accessed, the longer it stays in cache. Transparent storage array caching combined with NetApp disk deduplication provides cost savings on many levels.
Figure 16) Transparent storage array caching with Flash Cache and deduplication.
The decision whether to use Flash Cache in addition to Data ONTAP Virtual Storage Tiering is based on the amount of deduplicat ed dat a and the percentage of reads within the environment. As users of the VMware View environment create more data, the amount of deduplicated data changes, thus affecting the cache hit rate. Thus, more cache might be needed if the data bec omes more unique (even after running regular deduplication operation on the new data). NetApp recommends when possible to always use Data ONTAP 7.3.1 (Data ONTAP 7.3.2 when using Flash Cache) or later for VMware View environments. For environments with greater than 500 virtual desktops per NetApp storage controller, NetApp recommends the us e of both Data ONTAP caching and at least one Flash Cache device per storage controller. HOW FLAS H CACHE FUNCTIONS WITHOUT DEDUPLICATION (TRADITIONAL CACHING) Flash Cache works by receiving data blocks that have been evicted from main memory. After being evicted from main memory, should the same block be requested a second time and that block has not been evicted from Flash Cache, that block is read from Flash Cache and placed into main memory. E very block, whether or not it contains the same data as another block, is read first from disk. This is how legacy storage arrays operate in that the first of all reads must come from disk, and subsequent reads depend on the size of the cache. This is the reason legacy vendors require large amounts of cache.
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Figure 17) NetApp Flash Cache without deduplication.
VMware ESX
1 3 4 6 8 10
Memory
C B 7 11 A
Flash Cache NetApp FAS Array
2 A 5 B 9 C
Disk Storage
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Block A (blue) requested from client. Block A (blue) read from disk to memory. Block A (blue) returned to client. Block B (green) requested from client. Block B (green) read from disk to memory. Block B (green) returned to client. Block A (blue) evicted from memory to Flash Cache because memory is full. Block C (orange) requested from client. Block C (orange) read from disk to memory.
10. Block C (orange) returned to client. 11. Subsequent reads of block A (blue) or B (green) result in the eviction of blocks C (orange) and reads from Flash Cache. HOW FLAS H CACHE FUNCTIONS WITH DEDUPLICATION (TRANSPARENT STORAGE ARRAY CACHING) Flash Cache rec eives data blocks that have been evicted from main memory. After eviction from main memory, should a block be required for a second time, that block is read from Flash Cache, a cache hit, and placed into main memory. If the block being requested is a duplicate block that has been deduplicated (also known as a shared block), the block is read from Flas h Cache to main memory. As long as that block is not evicted from cache, all subsequent reads are performed from Flash Cache, thus improving performance by not having to go to disk. Transparent storage array cache combined with NetApp disk deduplication provides cost savings on many levels.
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Figure 18) NetApp Flash Cache with deduplication.
VMware ESX
1 3 4 6 7 10
Deduplicated VMs
Memory
9 8
A A
2 5
Disk Storage
A
Flash Cache NetApp FAS Array
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Block A (blue) requested from client. Block A (blue) read from disk to memory. Block A (blue) returned to client. Block A (green) requested from client. Block A (green) read from memory. Block A (green) ret urned to client. Block A requested from client. Block A (blue) evicted from memory to Flash Cache because memory is full and it was the first block. Block A (orange) read from memory.
10. Block A (orange) returned to client. FLEXS CALE FlexScale is the tunable software component to Flash Cache. It is a licensed feature of Data ONTAP 7.3 or greater. FlexScale allows different caching modes to be us ed bas ed on the type of workload. The different modes of caching are metadata only, normal user data, and low-priority blocks. Extensive scalable VMware View testing within the NetApp solution labs has shown that significant performance improvements can be gained by turning on metadata and normal user data caching modes in FlexScale. To license and enable FlexScale: 1. 2. Connect to the controller systems console, using either SSH, telnet, or serial console. Check to see if the FlexScale license has already been installed by typing license and finding the line that says flex_scale:
license
3.
If FlexScale is not licensed, you can license it by issuing the following command. If you do not have your license available, you can locate it within the NOW (NetApp on the Web) site: http://now.net app.com.
license add <License_Key>
To change the FlexScale caching modes for use with VMware View workloads: 1. Connect to the controller systems console, using either SSH, telnet, or serial console.
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2.
Change the following options with the following commands. This turns on metadata and normal user data block caching. These are the recommended FlexScale settings for V DI.
options flexscale.enable on options flexscale.normal_data_blocks on
3.
You can verify these settings have been changed:

options flexscale
FLEXS HARE FlexShare is a feature of Data ONTAP that allows administrators to set QoS policies on different volumes and data types. When configuring a NetApp storage cont roller in a VMware View Linked Clone environment, the FlexShare caching policy of keep should be set on the datastore used to store the replica disks. To change the FlexShare caching modes for use with VMware View Linked Clones: 1. 2. Connect to the controller systems console using either SSH, telnet, or serial console. Change the following options with the commands not ed. This turns on the FlexShare policy to keep the data from the select volume in Flas h Cache. These are the recommended FlexShare settings for VMware View Linked Clone replica datastores.
priority set volume replica_datastore cache=keep To verify these settings have been changed: priority show volume -v replica_datastore Volume: replica_datastore Enabled: on Level: Medium System: Medium Cache: keep
PREDICTIVE CACHE STATISTICS (PCS ) NetApp Predictive Cache Statistics (PCS) offers the ability to emulate large read cache sizes to measure their effect on system performance. PCS provides a means to approximate the performance gains of adding one or more Flash Cache modules to a system. PCS is configured in the same manner as Flash Cache and shares the same options for configuration. This guide describes its configuration and use: http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3801.pdf.
7.7
SUMMARY OF TRANSPARENT STORAGE ARRAY CACHE IN A VMWARE VIEW ENVIRONMENT
Using NetApp Flash Cache allows customers to size their VMware View environments for normal operations and have the peaks handled by Flash Cache. Now companies can provide their end users with a cost effective and high-performing VMware View desktop. THE VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING VALUE Cache efficiency: Deduplication occurs not only on disk but also in cache. Working sets of data are deduplicated so larger caches are not needed as in traditional legacy storage solutions. Performance acceleration: Blocks read from cache are served 10 times more quickly, as latency is reduced by a factor of 10. Storage efficiency: Allows you to reduce the spindle count even further as a large percent age of the read I/O requests are served up directly from Virtual Storage Tiering.
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Lower TCO: NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering and deduplication reduce rack space, power, and cooling.
NETAPP RECOMMENDATIONS Since read I/O can be greatly reduced by using Virtual Storage Tiering, NetApp recommends the use of Data ONTAP 7.3.1 or later. This version supports Virtual Storage Tiering across NetApps unified storage product line. When architecting large-scale solutions, the use of Virt ual Storage Tiering in Data ONTAP and Flas h Cache should be used to extend the capabilities. The net result of Virt ual Storage Tiering is that customers can buy less storage becaus e of read cache and allow the disk to be used for write I/O. Because of deduplication and Virtual Storage Tiering, the enduser experience is greatly enhanced.
7.8
SUMMARY
To summariz e, a NetApp solution is very efficient in meeting both capacity and performance requirements. NetApp storage efficiency capabilities reduce the spindle count required to meet the VDI capacity needs by 80% to 90%. From an I/O perspective, VDI is very bursty. Under normal conditions, the read and write ratio varies; however, there are business-critical operations such as desktop patching, upgrading, and antivirus scanning that generate I/O bursts on the storage. I/O bursts, along with read and write operations, are the main deciding factor in V DI sizing. I/O bursts and read operations are handled very effectively by NetA pp Flash Cache and dedupe. The end result is that with NetApp, customers require significantly fewer spindles to meet the requirements for read operations and I/O bursts as compared to traditional storage arrays. With read being offloaded by Virtual Storage Tiering, write IOPS bec ome the primarily deciding factor for spindle requirements on NetApp storage, but the NetApp solution still requires significantly fewer spindles than traditional storage arrays because of the WAFL and Data ONTAP write I/O optimization discussed earlier. Also, the same set of spindles can be us ed to host the user data on CIFS home directories, which do not have high IOPS requirements. This is possible because NetApp virtualizes disk I/O and capacity into large high-performing aggregates, whic h can be used on demand by individual VMs.
8 STORAGE SIZING BEST PRACTICES

Storage estimation for deploying VMware View solutions on NetApp includes the following steps: 1. 2. 3. Gather essential solution requirements Perform performance-based and capacity-based storage estimation Get recommendations on storage system physical and logical configuration
8.1
GATHER ESSENTIAL SOLUTION REQUIREMENTS
The first step of the storage sizing process is to gather the solution requirements. This is essential to size the storage system correctly in terms of the model and the number of required NetApp storage controllers, type and quantity of disk spindles, software features, and general configuration recommendations. The key storage sizing elements are:
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Total number of VMs for which the system must be designed (for example, 2000 VMs). The types and percentage of different types of desktops being deployed. For example, if VMware View is used, different desktop delivery models might require special storage considerations. Size per VM (for ex ample, 20GB C: drive, 2GB data disk).
VM OS (for example, Windows XP, Windows 7, and so on). Worker workload profile (type of applications on the VM, IOPS requirement, read-write ratio, if known). Number of years for which the storage growth must be considered. Disaster rec overy/business continuance requirements. Size of NAS (CIFS) home directories. NetApp strongly rec ommends storing user data on NAS (CIFS) home drives. Using NAS home drives, companies can more efficiently manage and protect the user data and eliminate the need to back up the virtual desktops.
For most of the VMware View deployments, companies might also plan to implement roaming profiles and/or folder redirection. For detailed information on implementing these technologies, consult the following doc ument ation: Microsoft Configuring Roaming Us er Profiles NetApp TR-3367: NetApp Systems in a Microsoft Windows Environment Microsoft Configuring Folder Redirection Types of desktops that are deployed for different user profiles Data protection requirements for different data components (OS disk, user data disk, CIFS home directories) for each desktop type being implemented For automated desktop pools utilizing linked clone in persistent access mode, alternatively the user dat a and profile can be hosted on a separate user data disk. Being a vmdk file, it is important to decide on the user dat a disk size upfront. NetApp thin provisioning, deduplication, and VSC 2.0 Backup and Recovery dat a protection solution components can be leveraged to achieve the desired storage efficiency and data protection for the user data disk.
VMware View considerations: When implementing VMware View, decide on the following:
PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS Estimating Environment Workload For proper storage sizing, it is critical to determine the IOPS requirement per virtual desktop. This involves analyzing how busy the virtual desktops are and the percentage of users who are heavy work ers (knowledge work ers) versus light work ers (for ex ample, data ent ry work ers). Important factors to be considered are: Hourly, daily, monthly, and quarterly user workload (best case and worst case scenarios). Percent reads versus writes (for ex ample, 50% reads/50% writes or 33% reads/67% writes). Commonality of data and how well the data is deduplicate becaus e this is directly related to cache efficiency. Conc urrency of user access; how many users are working at the same time. Effect of antivirus operation, such as scanning and virus definition updat es, as well as requirements, including frequency, schedules, and so on. Intelligent virus scan solutions such as McAfee MOVE or Trend Micro Deep Security should be used when designing an efficient and scalable VMware View solution. Any recommendations specific to VMware on storage performance and IOPS requirements for bestcase and worst-case situations for the customer environment. Also, VMware has provided some guidelines on IOPS per heavy and light user in the VMware VDI Storage Considerations white paper.
Performance Data Collection Methods This performance data can be collected in many ways. If the VMware View environment is not new, one of the following methods could be used:
NetApp data collection tool. The NetApp storage data collector and analyzer tool collect storagespecific performance counters from a range of Windows clients and help analyze the collected data so that they can be effectively used with the NetApp storage sizing tools. For details on how to obtain and run the tool in your environment, contact your NetApp account team. VMware Capacity Planner data collector, Windows Logman tool, PlateSpin, and TekTools VDI Environment asse ssment tool s: For example, Liquidware Labs, Lakeside Software
In addition to the NetApp dat a collection tool, VMware Capacity Planner, Windows Logman, Perfmon, PlateSpin, or TekTools can be used to analyze the existing physical desktops within the environment to understand the I/O requirements. Any of these met hods can produce data that assists in sizing the storage plat form and the spindle count required to service the workload. Example formula: Total storage IOPS requirement = (sum of all max IOPS/number of desktops tested) x number of virtual desktops Example: During the performance data collection over 30 days, the max number of IOPS for 10 clients totaled 1,327. The customer is looking to deploy 100 seats. From this sample one can calculate the estimated IOPS requirement. From this number, bec ause it is a maximum, one must decide the probability of all the clients reac hing the max I/O requirement at the same time and adjusting an acceptable maximum, as architecting a solution for this concurrency might not be necessary. The average of all IOPS on all clients can be used to get a better understanding of the daily load: 13,270 total max IOPS = (1,327 sum of max IOPS/10 desktops tested) x 100 future virtual desktops
8.2
PERFORMANCE-BASED AND CAPACITY-BASED STORAGE ESTIMATION PROCESS
There are two important considerations for sizing storage for VMware View. The storage system should be able to meet both the performance and capacity requirements of the project and be scalable to account for future growt h. The steps for calculating these storage requirements are: 1. 2. 3. 4. Determine storage sizing building block Perform detailed performance estimation Perform detailed capacity estimation Obtain recommendations on the storage system physical and logical configuration
DETERMI NE STORAGE SI ZING BUILDING BLOCK The purpose of this step involves determining the logical storage building block or POD size. This means deciding on the following parameters:
Storage building block scope: NetApp recommends the VMware View storage sizing building block to be based on the number of datastores required per ES X cluster because it provides benefits of planning and scaling the storage linearly with the number of ES X clusters required for the solution. Determine the usable storage required per storage building block (per ES X cluster). For VMFS datastores, there can be multiple LUNs per flexible volume, where each LUN is a datastore. For NFS datastores, each volume can represent a datastore with more VMs as compared to VMFS datastores. Flexible volume layout across storage cont rollers: All the flexible volumes belonging to an ES X cluster should be evenly split across the two cont rollers of the hosting NetApp storage cluster. This is
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recommended for better performance, as the VMware View deployment scales out from one HA cluster to multiple, hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of virt ual desktops. Consider vSphere Configuration Maximums Carefully review the VMware documentation on configuration maximums associated with the various storage-related parameters critical to the system design. For vS phere, review the document at www. vmware.com/pdf/ vsphere4/r41/ vsp_41_config_max.pdf. The important configuration parameters critical to the design are: Number of virtual CPUs per server: This information is important to understand the maximum limit on the number of VMs that can be hosted on the physical server, irrespective of the number of cores per server. Number of virtual CPUs per core for VMware View workloads: This information determines the upper limit on the numbers of VMs that can be supported per physical ESX host, but it cannot be more than the limit on number of virtual CPUs that can be hosted per server. Consult your VMware SE for a recommendation on the number of VMs that can be supported per ES X Server host. Number of VMs managed per vCenter instance: This information helps to determine the maximum number of ES X hosts that can be managed by a single vCent er instance. Number of NAS datastores per cluster: This information is critical for sizing scalable virtual desktops on NFS datastores. Number of VMFS datastores configured per server (for FCoE/FC/iSCS I): This information is critical for sizing scalable VMware View solutions on VMFS dat astores. Number of VMs per VMFS datastore: This information is critical for sizing scalable VMware View solutions on VMFS dat astores. For NFS, there are no VMware recommendations on the maximum number of VMs per datastore. Number of hosts per HA/DRS cluster
These configuration parameters should help determine the following design parameters: Proposed number of VMs per ES X host Proposed number of ES X hosts per ES X cluster Proposed number of dat astores per ES X cluster Proposed number of VMs per ES X cluster Number of ES X clusters managed by a vCent er instance Proposed number of VMs per datastore Total number of datastores required for the project
Provisioning fewer, denser datastores provides key advantages of ease of system administration, solution scalability, ease of managing data protection schemes, and effectiveness of NetApp deduplication. Decide on Storage P rotocol The two shared storage options available for VMware View are: VMFS-based dat astores over FCoE, FC, or iSCS I NFS-based datastores
NetApp is a true unified multiprotocol storage system that has the capability to serve storage for both shared storage options from a single storage cluster without the use of additional SAN or NAS gat eway devic es. Both of these are viable and scalable options for VMware View. Consider reading NetApp TR-3808: VMware vS phere and ES X 3.5 Multiprotocol Performance Comparis on Using FC, iSCS I, and NFS for results from a technical performance study conducted jointly by NetApp and VMware on different storage
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protocols. Also, perform a cost benefit analysis for your environment and decide on the storage protocol to be used. The key NetApp value proposition for VMware View holds true across all the protocols. PERFORM DETAILED P ERFORMANCE ESTIMATION This step involves estimating the total number of disk IOPS and Flash Cache modules required for the VMware View solution based on the requirements. Write I/O optimization with coalescing multiple write operations as single IOPS and Virtual Storage Tiering capabilities available in NetApp solution help significantly reduce the amount of data disks required. The calculations are performed based on the IOPS requirement per VM, version of Data ONTAP, Virtual Storage Tiering, and customer environment workload characteristics. For getting detailed estimation on savings achieved for your environment, contact your NetApp account team. The output of this step includes: Total number of Flash Cache modules required Total IOPS required in order to meet the performance needs Percentage of the total IOPS that require data disks considering the disk savings with write I/O optimization, NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering, and Flas h Cache capabilities
VMware View considerations: This step is applicable to all the six virt ual desktop types available in VMware View 4.5 and can help reduce the total number of spindles required. PERFORM DETAILED CAP ACITY ESTIMATION Figure 19 describes the various steps involved in the capacity-based storage estimation process. Each of these steps is discussed in detail in the following sections.
Figure 19) Overview of capacity estimation process.
DETERMI NE STORAGE REQUI RED FOR VM FILES There are several files associated with eac h VM, and these files require shared storage in addition to the actual VM.
Table 7) VMware file listing.
Files .vmdk
Purpose Two VMDK files that make up a VM. The flat.vmdk file is the actual data disk, and the .vmdk file is the descriptor file that describes the disk geometry of the flat file, (<2K). If considering using VMware Snapshot copies, the delta.vmdk files must be considered as a part of the storage requirements.
Storage Required Size of the VM (for example, 20GB)
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Files .vswp
Purpose
Storage Required
Amount of memory assigned to Each VM has its own VM-specific .vswp file based on the amount of memory assigned to that VM. For example, if you each VM (for example, 1GB/VM) are sizing for 100 VMs, each with 1GB of RAM, then plan for 100GB storage for .vswp. NetApp recommendation is to move the vswp file to a different datastore if Snapshot copies are being considered. See TR-3749: NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices for more details on this recommendation. A VMSN file stores the exact state of the VM when the Snapshot copy was created. A VMSD file stores information and metadata about Snapshot copies. It is important that space for these files be accounted for if temporary Snapshot copies must be created. Consider the number of Snapshot copies, how long they are likely to be kept, and how much they would grow. If the Snapshot copies also include memory, then the space requirements can grow very quickly. A vmx file is the primary configuration file for a VM and stores the important configuration parameters. This is a supplemental configuration file in text format for VMs that are in a team. Note that the .vmxf file remains if a VM is removed from the team. This is the suspended state file, which stores the state of a suspended VM. This is the file that stores the state of the VM BIOS. The log files contain information on the VM activity and are useful in troubleshooting VM problems. Size of VM + 515% space for non-VMDK files The total space required for the non-VMDK files might be 5% if the vswp is moved to a separate datastore. It is higher (15%) if the vswp is located on the same datastore. This number is even more if there are specific requirements for creating and retaining VMware Snapshot copies.
.vmsd/.vmsn
.vmx .vmxf
.vmss .nvram .log
Total storage for VM files
VMware View considerations: If you are planning to implement VMware View, for calculation purposes, it is important to understand the total space required per VM for individual desktops, manual desktop pool, and automated desktop pool leveraging full clones. The actual storage required (output of the storage estimation process) is far less considering the NetApp solution space efficiency components. For automated desktop pool leveraging linked clones, estimate the space required by all the files that make up the parent VM, replica VMs, OS data disks, user data disks, and vs wap, considering the policies for linked clone desktop refres h, recompose, and rebalance. For further details, refer to the VMware View System Administrator Guide.
DETERMI NE PROJECTED STORAGE ESTIMATION LIFETIME Determine the total number of years for which the storage growth must be factored in. This is important because when using the NetApp Flex Clone and deduplication solution components, initially the VMs hosted in the FlexClone volumes do not consume any space. But the new writes require storage to commit the writes.
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PROVISIONING WITH FLEXCLONE FlexClone provides simple, rapid, space-efficient, zero-upfront cost provisioning of VMware View datastores using NetApp VSC 2.0 and the provisioning and cloning capabilities. FlexClone technology uses the power of NetApp S napshot technology to rapidly provision VMFS or NFS datastores. The process of provisioning with FlexClone involves creating a template datastore and making multiple FlexClone volumes of the datastore depending on the total number of VMs required. This template datastore is the base of the FlexClone volumes. For example, if you have an NFS volume with 200 VMs contained within the volume/datastore, leverage FlexClone to provision additional volumes of 200 VMs within seconds. Using the power of Flex Clone you can eliminate the need to clone each VM sequentially, which can be a very time-consuming process, especially when provisioning hundreds or thousands of VMs. For more information on FlexClone technology concepts, see NetApp TR-3347: Flex Clone Volumes: A Thorough Introduction. VMware View considerations: If you are planning to implement VMware View, the use of NetApp FlexClone technology is applicable to manual desktop pools. For automated desktop pool leveraging full clones, estimate the space required by each full clone. Automated desktop pools can also benefit from the use of VMware linked clones. ESTIMATE TEMPLATE VOLUMES/DATAS TORES The next step is to size the template datastore/ volumes appropriately. The template datastore is a datastore that is used as a base that is cloned quickly and efficiently using FlexClone. Using template datastores provides the ability to use the provisioning benefits associated with Flex Clone. From an overall management and scalability perspective, consider splitting the datastores for each ES X cluster equally across the two controllers of the NetApp storage system. This would require two template datastores (one per NetApp controller) per ES X cluster. It also helps multiple ES X clusters have no dependencies on one another for sharing storage. When using NetApp VSC 2. 0 provisioning and cloning with Data ONTAP 7.3.1 and higher, file-level FlexClone can be leveraged to rapidly make space-efficient clones inside a template volume. This example demonstrates the sizing of a template volume for an NFS environment in which we are creating one datastore with 200 VMs. We have budget ed 10% overhead within the templat e volume. Example formula 1 (Dat a ONTAP 7.3. 1 or higher): Size of template volume = [(space required per VM) x (number of datastores per flexible volume)] + 10% buffer space Example: 28GB template volume (approx.) = [(25GB per VM) x (1 datastore per volume)] + 10% Example formula 2 (Dat a ONTAP 7.3 or earlier): Size of template volume = [(space required per VM) x (number of VMs per datastore) x (number of datastores per flexible volume)] + 10% buffer space Example: 5.5TB template volume = [(25GB per VM) x (200 VMs per dat astore) x (1 datastore per volume)] + 10% Note: The buffer space in formula 2 is only a temporary requirement so that the template volume doesnt get 100% full when all the VMs are added in the datastore. Set the Snapshot reserve to zero and disable the default Snapshot schedule.
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CONSIDER TEMPLATE VOLUME DEDUPLI CATI ON SAVI NGS Once the storage required per template volume is determined, estimate the deduplication savings. For flexible volumes with multiple identical VMs, the deduplication savings are very high because the OS part of all the VMs in the volume is almost identical. Note: For deployments leveraging Data ONTAP 7.3. 1 or higher, the template datastore is already deduplicated as a result of FlexClone file-level cloning inside the template datastore. Therefore, factoring in deduplication savings is valid only for deployments with Data ONTAP 7.3 or lower.
For VMware View on NetApp environments, we estimate the initial deduplication savings to be at least 80% to 95% for the template datastores as all virtual machines within the datastore are identical, given that there are more than eight VMs per template datastore. For more general information on deduplication, refer to NetApp TR-3505: NetApp Deduplication for FAS, Deployment and Implement ation Guide. The output of this step gives the storage required per template flexible volume after the deduplication savings have been factored in (for Data ONTAP 7.3 or lower). It might be also necessary to factor in additional space for Snapshot reserve. The Snapshot reserve can be less for environments where the template volume does not change muc h and few Snapshot copies are retained. Consult a NetApp SE for recommendations for your data protection requirements. Example formula: Deduplicated template volume size = [(size of template FlexVol volume) x (% deduplication)] x % Snapshot reserve space Example: 121GB template volume size = [(5.5TB FlexVol volume) x (98% savings)] x 10% VMware View considerations: If you are planning to implement VMware View, the us e of NetApp deduplication for template datastore is applicable to manual desktop pools. Deduplication scenarios for automat ed desktop pools leveraging linked clones are discussed later in the document. ESTIMATE ADDITIONAL STORAGE CONS UMED PER VM All the VMs hosted on the flexible volumes provisioned with Flex Clone initially access the same data blocks as the deduplicated template volume. However, the new writes for every VM consume new storage blocks. Over the years for which the storage growth must be considered, every FlexClone volume consumes some new storage space. Calculat e the projected storage consumed by each VM over this time period, across all the VM storage elements (OS/system files, data files on C drive) and non-VMDK files in the datastore: 1. 2. 3. 4. Projected new storage consumed per year (GB) for OS part of the VM. Projected new storage consumed per year (GB) for data part of the VM. Projected new storage consumed per VM for non-VMDK files in the datastore. Multiply each of these elements with the total number of years for which the storage estimation is being done.
Example formula: Total additional storage/VM for OS part of the C drive = (yearly OS delta) x number years Total additional storage/VM for data part of C drive = (yearly data delta) x number years Total additional storage/VM for non-VMDK files in the datastore = (yearly non-V DMK files delta) x number years
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Example: 6GB total additional storage/VM for OS = (2GB OS) x 3 years 15GB total additional storage/VM for data = (5GB data) x 3 years 0.9GB total additional storage/VM for data = (300MB data) x 3 years VMware View considerations: If you are planning to implement VMware View, considerations should be given to each desktop delivery model. The method previously described is valid for VMs being used in the individual desktops and manual desktop pool desktop delivery models. For automated desktop pools, leveraging linked clone, considerations should be given to the linked clone desktop disk usage. For the VMs provisioned using linked clones in persistent access mode, based on your user profiles, determine how much will be growth of the OS data disks between the refresh, recompose, and/or rebalanc e operations. Also, for the VMs provisioned using linked clones in persistent access mode, determine the projected growt h of the user data disk over the lifespan of the user accessing this disk. It is important to decide on the size of the vmdk file representing the user dat a disk upfront. For VMs provisioned using linked clones in nonpersistent access mode, based on your user profile, determine how muc h will be the OS data disk growth.
For further details, refer to the View Administration Guide.
ESTIMATE STORAGE REQUI RED FOR FLEX CLONE VOLUMES (CONSIDERING DEDUP E SAVINGS) Note: The storage required per FlexClone volume can be obtained by multiplying the results of the previous step with the total number of VMs planned per FlexClone volume and discounting the deduplication savings. This is also a factor of the number of VMs hosted per FlexClone volume. The deduplication savings for the OS image part of the C: drive is higher becaus e all the patches and upgrades applied to each VM are essentially the same. A conservative number for the OS part would be between 50% and 70% (based on existing customer deployments and NetApp solutions lab validation). However, the deduplication savings for the data part of the C: drive might not be as dense as the OS images as it is unique to each individual VM. A conservative number for the data part would be between 20% and 50%, as is seen in CIFS home directory deduplication savings for customer deployments.
Example formula: Per FlexVol volume storage consumption = [(total additional storage per VM for OS) x (number of VMs per FlexClone volume) x deduplication savings] + [(total additional storage per VM for data) x (number of VMs per FlexClone volume) x deduplication savings] + [(total additional storage/VM for non-VMDK files in the datastore) x (number of VMs per FlexClone volume) x deduplication savings] Example: 1950GB per FlexVol volume storage consumption = (6GB x 200 VMs) x 70% savings + (15GB x 200 VMs) x 50% savings + (0.9GB x 200 VMs) x 50% savings For environments in which Snapshot and/or mirroring not used for the VM C drives, NetApp recommends setting the Snaps hot reserve to 0% and disabling the Snapshot schedule. If Snapshot copies or SnapMirror are used, the snap reserve should be set to a value that allows for the planned number of Snapshot copies. To adjust Snapshot reserve and Snapshot schedule: 1. 2. Connect to the controller systems console, using either SSH, telnet, or serial console. Set the volume Snapshot reserve:
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snap reserve <vol-name> ##
3.
Set the volume Snapshot schedule:

snap sched <vol-name> 0 0 0
The output of this step is the total usable storage required by each FlexClone volume. This number can be extrapolat ed to calculate the total us able storage required for the templat e volumes and associated FlexClone volumes per ES X cluster and ultimately for the entire environment, depending on the total number of ES X clusters required. Again, NetApp recommends splitting the datastores for each ES X cluster across the two controllers of the NetApp storage system. VMware View considerations: The considerations in this step are valid for VMs provisioned using NetApp VSC provisioning and cloning capability (leveraging FlexClone technology) configured either as individual desktops or as part of the manual desktop pool. For VMs provisioned as part of automated desktop pools using VMware full clones, 50% to 90% storage savings can be achieved using NetApp deduplication. Consider thes e savings in the storage estimation process. After deploying VMware full clones, deduplication should be run to achieve storage efficiency. By deduplicating the environment prior to booting, VS T can significantly improve performance. Regularly schedule deduplication jobs can be run to maint ain storage efficiency but the frequency of deduplication jobs should be determined by the amount of changed dat a and the length of the deduplication process. For VMs provisioned as part of automated desktop pools using VMware linked clones, significant storage savings can be achieved for the user dat a disk using NetApp deduplication. A conservative number to consider would be between 20% and 50%, as seen for home directories.
FACTOR IN SCRATCH SPACE STORAGE REQUIREMENTS If required, factor in additional storage (scratch space) for test and dev operations or any other reason. This step is not mandatory, but highly recommended (for fut ure or last-minute design changes ). SUMMARY OF CAP ACITY-BAS ED STORAGE ESTIMATION PROCESS The capacity calculations have provided guidance to the following essential storage architecture elements:
Total number of datastores per template volume Total number of FlexClone volumes per template volume Total storage required per template volume Total storage required per FlexClone volume Total storage required for each template and Flex Clone volume combination Total number of template and Flex Clone volume combinations Total storage required for all the template and FlexClone volume combinations All the storage considerations for different desktop delivery models available in VMware View
SUMMARY OF STORAGE CONSIDERATIONS FOR DIFFERENT DES KTOP DELIV ERY MODELS IN VMWARE VIEW Table 8 summarizes the storage sizing considerations for different desktop deployment models in VMware View, specifically with linked clones.
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Table 8) Summary of storage considerations for desktop delivery models.
Pool Type
Virtual Desktop Provisioning Method NetApp VSC Provisioning and Cloning Capability (FlexClone) VMware View Composer (Full Clones)
Generic Recommendations
Special Storage Considerations
Manual Desktop Pool
Automated Desktop Pool
VMware View Composer (Linked Clones)
Determine the types of desktops that will be deployed for different user profiles Determine data protection requirements for different data components (OS disk, user data disk, CIFS home directories) for each desktop type Consider reading the View Administration Guide
Primary objective of the discussion in this section of the document
Estimate the space required by each full clone Leverage NetApp deduplication to achieve 50% to 90% storage efficiency Consider the storage savings in the storage estimation process Estimate the space required by all the files that make up the parent VM, replica, OS data disks, user data disks, and vswap considering the policies for linked clone desktop refresh, recompose, and rebalance. Consider space in each datastore for different replica(s). The number of replica(s) in a datastore depend on the total number of parent VMs and Snapshot copies to which the active linked clone VMs in each datastore are anchored. Decide on your storage overcommit policies to determine the number of linked clone VMs that can be hosted in a datastore. For detailed information, refer to the View Administration Guide. Give consideration to the linked clone desktop disk usage as in some instances, the OS data disk can grow to the size of the parent VM (for details, see the View Administration Guide). For the persistent access mode, based on your user profiles, determine how much will be the growth of the OS data disks between the refresh, recompose, and/or rebalance operations. For persistent access mode, determine the projected growth of the user data disk over the lifespan of the user accessing this disk. This is important to decide in the design phase of the project. For persistent access mode, significant storage savings can be achieved for the user data disk using NetApp thin provisioning and data deduplication. A conservative number to consider would be between 20% and 50%, as seen for home directories. For persistent access mode, NetApp VSC backup and recovery data protection solution can be leveraged to achieve the desired storage efficiency and data protection for the user data disk. For nonpersistent access mode, based on your user profile, determine the growth rate of the OS data disk. Consider policies such as deleting VM after first use to conserve storage space.
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Figure 20) FlexClone scalability.

n Gold Flexible Volume and associated zero cost FlexClone combinations hosting total of 10s of 1000s of VMs
One Gold Flexible Volume and associated zero cost FlexClone combination hosting 1000s of VMs
n VMware datastores 1 1 n FlexClone Volumes (y GB each)
n 1 1
Storage required per building block
Gold Flexible Volume (X GB)
1
y = Space required for new writes only
8.3
GETTING RECOMMENDATIONS ON STORAGE SYSTEM PHYSICAL AND LOGICAL CONFIGURATION
Provide the total capacity and performance requirements to the NetApp SE and obt ain appropriate storage system configuration. If required, NetA pp can help you in each phase of the process previously discussed. NetApp has detailed sizing tools specific to VMware View that can help architect VMware View deployments of any scale. The tools are designed to factor in all the NetApp storage efficiency and performance acceleration components discussed earlier. This step also involves planning the logical architecture (the total number of template and the associated FlexClone volumes that should be provisioned per aggregate). The recomm endation is to provision fewer large aggregates over more, smaller aggregates. The advantages to larger aggregates are that the I/O has more disks to write across, therefore increasing the performanc e of all volumes contained within the aggregate. Based on the estimated volume size from the capacity calculations section earlier, det ermine the number of template and associated FlexClone volumes that can be hosted in the largest possible aggregate. It is also a good idea to leave some room to grow the aggregates to handle situations when unexpected growth occurs. Also, disable scheduled aggregate Snapshot copies and set the aggregate snap res erve to zero. Make sure the data disk in the aggregate satisfies the performanc e requirements for the proposed number of VMs for volumes to be hosted in the aggregate.
9 STORAGE ARCHITECTURE BEST PRACTICES

In a VMware View environment, the availability and performance of the storage infrastructure are very critical because thousands of users will be affected by storage outages or performance issues. Thus the storage architecture must provide the level of availability and performance typical for business-critical applications. NetApp has all the soft ware and hardware solutions that address the availability and performance for large, scalable VMware View environments. A complete VMware View deployment guide can be found NetApp TR-3770: 2,000-S eat VMware View on NetApp Deployment Guide Using NFS.
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9.1
STORAGE SYSTEM CONFIGURATION BEST PRACTICES
This section of the solution guide provides a high-level overview of the components and features that should be considered when deploying a VMware View infrastructure on NetApp. For detailed information on storage resiliency, refer to the following TRs: NetApp TR-3437: Storage Best Practices and Resiliency Guide NetApp TR-3450: Active-Active Controller Overview and Best Practices Guidelines
BUILDING A RESILIENT STORAGE ARCHITECTURE Acti ve-active NetApp controllers. The controller in a storage system can be a single point of failure if not designed correctly. Active-active controllers provide controller redundancy and simple automatic transparent failover in the event of a controller failure to deliver enterprise-class availability. Providing transparent recovery from component failure is critical as all desktops rely on the shared storage. For more details, visit www.netapp.com/us/products/platform-os/active-active.html. Multipath high availability (HA). Multipath HA storage configuration further enhances the resiliency and performance of active-active controller configurations. Multipath HAconfigured storage enhances storage resiliency by reducing unnec essary takeover by a partner node due to a storage fault, improving overall system availability and promoting higher performance consistency. Multipath HA provides added prot ection against various storage faults, including HBA or port failure, cont rollerto-shelf cable failure, shelf module failure, dual intershelf cable failure, and secondary path failure. Multipath HA helps provide consistent performance in active-active configurations by providing larger aggregate storage loop bandwidth. For more information, visit http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr3437.pdf. RAI D data protection. Data protection against disk drive failure using RA ID is a standard feature of most shared storage devices, but with the capacity and subsequent rebuild times of current hard drives where exposure to another drive failure can be catastrophic, protection against double disk failure, is now essential. NetApp RA ID-DP is an advanced RA ID technology that is provided as the default RA ID level on all FAS systems. RAID-DP provides performance that is comparable to that of RAID 10, wit h much higher resiliency. It provides protection against double disk failure as compared to RAID 5, which can only protect against one disk failure. NetApp strongly recommends using RA IDDP on all RA ID groups that store VMware View data. For more information on RAID-DP, refer to NetApp white paper 3298 at www.netapp.com/ us/library/white-papers/wp_3298.html. Remote LAN management (RLM) card. The RLM card improves storage system monitoring by providing secure out -of-band access to the storage controllers, which can be used regardless of the state of the controllers. The RLM offers a number of remote management capabilities for NetApp controllers, including remote access, monitoring, troubleshooting, logging, and alerting features. The RLM also extends AutoSupport capabilities of the NetApp controllers by sending alerts or "down storage system" notification with an AutoSupport message when the cont roller goes down, regardless of whether the controller can send AutoSupport messages. These AutoSupport messages also provide proactive alerts to NetApp to help provide faster service. For more details on RLM, visit http://now.net app.com/ NOW/download/tools/rlm_fw/info.shtml. Networking infra structure design (FCoE, FC, or IP). A network infrastructure (FCoE, FC, or IP) should have no single point of failure. A highly available solution includes having two or more FC/FCoE or IP network switches; two or more CNAs, HBAs, or NICs per host; and two or more target ports or NICs per storage controller. In addition, if using Fibre Channel, two independent fabrics are required to have a truly redundant architecture.
For additional information on designing, deploying, and configuring vS phere SA N and IP net works, refer to TR-3749: NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices. TOP RESILIENCY BEST P RACTICES Use RA ID-DP, the NetApp high-performance implementation of RA ID 6, for better data protection.
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Use multipat h HA with active-active storage configurations to improve overall system availability as well as promote higher performance consistency. Use the default RA ID group size (16) when creating aggregat es. Allow Data ONTAP to select disks automatically when creating aggregates or volumes. Use the latest Data ONTAP general deployment release available on the NOW site. Use the latest storage controller, shelf, and disk firmware available on the NOW site. Disk drive differences are FC, SAS, SATA disk drive types, disk size, and rotational speed (RPM). Maintain two hot spares for each type of disk drive in the storage system to take advantage of Maintenance Center. Do not put user data into the root volume. Replicat e data with SnapMirror or SnapVault for disaster rec overy (DR) protection. Replicat e to remote locations to increase data protection levels. Use an active-active storage controller configuration (clustered failover) to eliminate single points of failure (SP OFs). Deploy SyncMirror and RA ID-DP for the highest level of storage resiliency.
For more details, refer to NetApp TR-3437: Storage Best Practices and Resiliency Guide. BUILDING A HIGH-P ERFORMANCE STORAGE ARCHITECTURE A VMware View workload can be very I/O int ensive, especially during the simultaneous boot up, login, and virus scan within the virtual desktops. These first two workloads are commonly known as a boot storm and login storms. A boot storm, depending on how many ES X Servers and guests are attached to the storage, can create a significant performance effect if the storage is not sized properly. A boot storm can affect both the speed in which the VMware desktops are available to the customer and overall customer experience. A virus scan storm is similar to a boot storm in I/O but might last longer and can significantly affect customer experience. A virus scan storm is when a virus scan within the guest is initiated on all the clients at once. Due to these factors, it is important to make sure that the storage is architected in such a way as to eliminate or dec reas e the effect of these events. Aggregate sizing. An aggregate is NetApps virtualiz ation layer, which abstracts physical disks from logical datas ets, which are referred to as flexible volumes. Aggregates are the means by which the total IOPS available to all of the physical disks are pooled as a resource. This design is well suited to meet the needs of an unpredictable and mixed workload. NetApp recommends that whenever possible a small aggregate should be used as the root aggregate. This aggregate stores the files required for running and providing GUI management tools for the storage system. The remaining storage should be placed into a small number of large aggregates. The overall disk I/O from VMware environments is traditionally random by nature, so this storage design gives optimal performance because a large number of physical spindles are available to service I/O requests. On smaller storage systems, it might not be practical to have more than a single aggregate, due to the restricted number of disk drives on the system. In these cases, it is acceptable to have only a single aggregate. Di sk configuration summary. When sizing your disk solution, consider the number of desktops being served by the storage controller/disk system and the number of IOPS per desktop. This way one can make a calculation to arrive at the number and size of the disks needed to serve the given workload. Remember, keep the aggregates large, spindle count high, and rot ational speed fast. When one factor needs to be adjusted, Flash Cache can help eliminate potential bottlenecks to the disk. Flexible Volumes. Flexible volumes contain either LUNs or virtual disk files that are accessed by VMware ES X Servers. NetApp rec ommends a one-to-one alignment of VMware datastores to flexible volumes. This design offers an easy means to understand the VMware data lay out when viewing the storage configuration from the storage system. This mapping model also makes it easy to implement
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Snapshot backups and SnapMirror replication policies at the datastore level, becaus e NetApp implements these storage side features at the flexible volume level. LUNS. LUNs are units of storage provisioned from a NetApp storage controller directly to the ES X Servers. The LUNs presented to the ES X Server are formatted with the VMware File System (VMFS). This shared file system is capable of storing multiple virtual desktops and is shared among all ES X Servers within the HA/ DRS cluster. This method of using LUNs with VMFS is referred to as a VMFS datastore. For more information, see the VMware Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for vS phere ES X 4 and 4i. Flash Cache. Flash Cache enables Virtual Storage Tiering and improves read performanc e and in turn increases throughput and decreases latency. It provides greater system scalability by removing IOPS limitations due to disk bottlenecks and lowers cost by providing the equivalent performance with fewer disks. Leveraging Flash Cache in a dense (deduplicated) volume allows all the shared blocks to be accessed directly from the intelligent, faster Flash Cac he versus disk. Flash Cache provides great benefits in a VMware View environment, especially during a boot storm, login storm, or virus storm, because only one copy of deduplicated data needs to be read from the disk (per volume). Each subsequent access of a shared block is read from Flash Cache and not from disk, increasing performance and dec reasing latency and overall disk utilization.
10 CONFIGURING VSC 2.0 PROVISIONING AND CLONING

1. Log into vCenter using the vCenter client.
2.
Select NetApp from the Home screen of the vCenter client.
3.
If you are launching VS C 2.0 for the first time, accept the security alert by clicking Yes. You also can view and install the certificat e at this time.
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4.
Select the storage controllers from the tabs listed.
5.
Select the Storage cont rollers tab and select Add.
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6.
Enter the IP address of the storage controller as well as the user name and password. If SSL has been enabled on the controller, select Use SSL. If you are unsure if SSL has been enabled, check the box and try to connect. If enabled, you will connect; if not, it will reject the connection. Then uncheck the box and try again.
7.
By default the interfaces, volumes, and aggregates are all allowed and are on the right. To prohibit the use of an interface, volume, or aggregate, select it and click the single left arrow. Once you have completed selecting all the appropriate int erfaces, select Next.
8.
After configuring the allowed int erfaces, volumes, and aggregates, review the configuration and click Apply. This completes the configuration of the VSC provisioning and cloning capability.
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11 DEPLOYING NETAPP SPACE-EFFICIENT VM CLONES

This chapter demonstrates the steps involved in deploying NetApp space-efficient clones using the NetApp VS C provisioning and cloning capability. The VSC allows administrators to leverage the power of NetApp FlexClone (both file and volume) and redeploy virtual machines after patching or software updates, thin provisioning, and deduplication management capabilities directly from the VMware vCenter GUI. Integrating NetApp capabilities into VMware vCenter allows VMware administrators to provision or reprovision one to thousands of new virtual machines in minutes without requiring the administrator to log into the storage. The VSC utilizes both the NetApp and VMware APIs to create a robust, fully supported solution. No end user customization or scripting is required. In this section, we demonstrat e how to properly configure the virtual machine template and deploy one or thous ands of virtual mac hines right from the VMware vCent er interface. Note: The VSC 2.0 supports Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 2003 and Windows 2008. The VSC not only is for deploying virtual desktops but also can easily be used for deploying virtual servers. More details on supported operating systems can be found in the Provisioning and Cloning Administration Guide.
11.1 OVERVIEW OF DEPLOYING NETAPP SPACE-EFFICIENT CLONES

Figure 21) NetApp VSC 2.0 deployment over view.
NetApp Provisioning and Cloning Deployment Overview

Deploy space efficient clones with the VSC 2.0
Provision NetApp storage
Build template virtual machine
PROVISION NETAPP STORAGE This step involves preparing the NetApp storage for provisioning VMs. The detailed steps involved are as follows:
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1. 2.
Create aggregate. Create template dat astore with the VSC 2.0.
BUILD TEMPLATE VIRTUAL MACHINE This step involves creating and customizing the template VM that is used to deploy the VMs within the environment. The detailed steps involved are as follows: 1. 2. Create virtual machine for use as a template. For Windows XP virtual machines, perform guest partition alignment for the empty vmdk as per instructions in TR-3747. For Windows 7, no guest partition alignment is necessary as the default partition is properly aligned. Install Windows on the template VM. Disable NTFS last access. Change disk timeout value. Install all nec essary applications and modify any additional system settings. Power off VM and mark as template.
3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
DEPLOY SPACE-EFFICI ENT CLONES WITH THE VSC 2.0 This step involves using the NetApp VSC 2.0 provisioning and cloning capability to deploy virtual machines from the templat e VM. This step assumes that the NetApp VSC has already been installed and configured on a server. The detailed steps involved are as follows: 1. 2. Create a customization specification within VMware vCenter client. Use the NetApp VSC to create the NetApp volumes, attach the datastores, provision the virtual machines, and import into VMware View 4.5.
11.2 DETAILS OF DEPLOYING NETAPP SPACE-EFFICIENT CLONES

PROVISION NETAPP STORAGE The first step in the VMware View mass deployment process is to provision NetApp storage. Figure 22 shows the complete process.
Figure 22) Provision NetApp storage.
Provision NetApp Storage

Create Template Datastore Using the VSC 2.0
Create Aggregate
CREATE AGGREGATE Create aggregate(s) on the storage system as per the design. The details on storage design considerations are discussed in chapter 9. Basic recommendations include use RAID-DP and configure fewer, larger aggregates but make sure to follow the storage design. This process can be accomplished very simply using the NetApp System Manager Create Aggregate wizard.
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CREATE TEMPLATE DATASTORE USI NG THE VS C 2.0 As per the storage design, creat e at least one template datastore on one of the storage cont rollers. This datastore is used to house the templat e VM(s). This proc ess can be accomplished by using the NetApp VSC 2.0. For manual configurations follow the configuration recommendations mentioned in TR-3749: NetApp and VMware vS phere Storage Best Practices, specifically for thin-provisioning, automatic Snapshot copies, volume auto grow, Snapshot auto delete, other generic volume settings (for example, no_atime_update), qtree security style, and so on. If a template datastore already exists within the environment, verify the volume has the proper settings. 1. Log into vCenter using the vCenter client.
2.
Either select the Provision datastore icon from the vCenter taskbar or right -click the data center, cluster, or host to provision a new datastore.
3.
Next, select the storage cont roller on which you want to create the template dat astore.
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4.
Continue with the steps in the following table depending on whether you are using NFS or VMFS.
For V MFS: Select V MFS for iSCSI or FC and c lick Next.
For NFS: Select NFS and clic k Next.
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Enter in the datastore size and the datastore name; select the aggregate; if applicable, select thin provisioning; set the auto-grow policy; and click Next.
Enter in the datastore size and the datastore name; choose to create a new volume; select the aggregate; if applicable, select thin provisioning; choose the block size and clic k Next.
Rev iew the configuration and c lick Apply.
Rev iew the configuration and c lick Apply.
BUILD TEMPLATE VIRTUAL MACHINE In this phase, a VM is created that will be the templat e image for the virtual desktops that you plan to provision for the end users. This process should be familiar, because it is the same process that VMware administrators follow when creating virtual server templates. The process includes building a VM, performing the guest partition alignment if using Windows XP, installing the OS, applying patches, installing applications and general system settings, and powering off the VM. This proc ess starts by making sure that the guest OS, required business, and infrastructure applications are installed in the template VM and it is in a condition to be duplicated.
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Figure 23) Build template virtual machine.
Build Template Virtual Machine

Perform guest partition alignment (Win XP Only)
Create new virtual machine in vCenter
Install guest operating system
Disable NTFS last access
Power off virtual machine and mark as template
Install necessary applications and general system settings
Change disk timeout value
Create New Virt ual Machine in vCenter The first step in the building of a virtual machine is to create a VM within vCenter. Use your companys standard configuration for creating new virt ual machines. Make sure to attach all virtual hardware, including net working that will be needed during production. Refer to the VMware recommendations in the Windows XP Deployment Guide at www. vmware.com/files/pdf/ XP_guide_vdi.pdf. At the time of this publication, no formal recommendations were available for Windows 7; however, many of the recommendations for Windows XP still apply. Perform Guest Partition Alignment If deploy Windows XP, perform the guest partition alignment for the template VMs VMDK prior to the installation of the guest operating system, as described in TR-3747: NetApp Best Practices for File System Alignment in Virtual Environments. Install Operating System Install Windows XP or Windows 7 on the template VM. For Windows XP desktops, follow VMware recommendations in the Windows XP Deployment Guide at www. vmware.com/files/pdf/ XP_guide_vdi.pdf and Windows 7 Optimization Guide at www. vmware.com/ files/pdf/VMware-ViewOptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf. Install all of the baseline applications and service packs. Disabling NTFS Last Access It is important to change the value of last access on the template VM, because this reduces the number of unnecessary I/Os to disk. 1. Log into the templat e using Remot e Desktop or Virtual Center Remote Console.
2. 3.
Open a CMD window by going to Start > Run, entering cmd, and pressing Enter. Check the current value for disable last access:
fsutil behavior query disablelastaccess
4.
If the value is zero, enter the following to disable last access:

fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1
For more information, visit http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/9fc f44c8-68f4-4204b403-0282273bc 7b31033.mspx?mfr=true. Change Disk Timeout Value Increasing this value increases the amount of time before a SCS I timeout within the guest OS.
1.
Log in to the template using Remote Desktop or Virtual Center Remote Console.
2. 3. 4. 5.
Open a regedit by going to Start > Run, typing regedit and pressing Enter. Find the TimeOutValue by following the path [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYS TEM\Current ControlSet\Services\Disk]. Change the key "TimeOutValue"=dword:00000190. Reboot the VM now or at the end of the installation of applications and general system settings.
Install Necessary Applications and General System Settings Install all the necessary infrastructure and business applic ations in the template VM. A few examples include Microsoft Office, antivirus soft ware, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and a connection broker agent (if planning to use a connection broker); allow specific users or groups RDP access to the VMs. More settings can be found in the Windows XP Deployment Guide at www. vmware.com/ files/pdf/ XP _guide_vdi.pdf and on the Web. Power Off VM and Convert to Templat e (Optional) After performing all the template customizations and soft ware installations, power off the virtual machine, because it needs to be powered off to deploy. Then convert the VM to be a template. This reduces the risk of accidentally powering on the VM. DEPLOY SPACE-EFFICI ENT CLONES WITH VSC 2.0 This section describes in detail the use of the VSC 2. 0 provisioning and cloning capability to clone one to thousands of virtual machines. The VSC 2.0 is a VMware vCenter plug-in framework that allows VMware administrators the ability to provision virtual machines directly from vCenter without having to leave the vCenter client. This section assumes that the NetApp VSC has been installed and registered as outlined in chapter 10. For further details, consult the VSC 2.0 Installation and Administration Guide. The following are the det ailed steps involved in the process.
Figure 24) Deploy space-efficient clones with VSC 2.0.
Deploy Space Efficient Clones with VSC 2.0

Create customization specification Deploy space efficient clones with the VSC 2.0
Create Customization Specification Create a customization specification for use with the deployment of the VMs. The customization specification creates the information necessary for sysprep to successfully customize a guest OS from vCenter. It includes information on hostname, network configuration, license information, domain membership, and other information nec essary to customize a guest OS. This procedure can be found in the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide on page 40. This customization specification can be used by VSC Provisioning and Cloning to personalize eac h VM. In addition to creating the customization specification, sysprep must be downloaded and installed if using Windows XP or Windows 2003 as the guest operating system. Procedures to do this can be found in the vSphere Basic System Administration Guide on page 325.
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Deploy Space-E fficient Clones Using VSC 2.0 In this example, 2,000 virtual machines are deployed using VSC. VSC has already been installed on vCenter. It is used to create eight datastores that have 250 virtual machines each. It uses the following process: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Create the clones with file FlexClone. Clone the datastores wit h volume Flex Clone. Mount the datastores to each of the ES X hosts. Create the virtual machines from the cloned vmdk. Customize the virtual machines using the customization specification. Power on the virt ual machines. Import virtual machines into VMware View.
To deploy space-efficient clones using VSC 2. 0: 1. Log into vCenter using the vCenter client.
2.
Once storage controllers have been added, select the inventory button to get back to the servers and VMs. Right-click the VM to be cloned and select Create Rapid Clones.
3.
Choose the storage controller with the drop-down arrow and click Next.
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Additionally, if the VMware VI client is not running, select Advanced Options and enter the password for vCent er. 4. Select the data center, cluster, or server to provision the VMs to and select the Specify the virtual machine folder for the new clones if necessary and select Next.
5.
Select the disk format you would like to apply to the virtual machine clones and click Next.
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6.
Enter in the number of clones, the clone name, the starting clone number, and the clone number increment. Then, if guest customization is required, select the check box and the customization specification that will be applied after the VM has been provisioned. Then choose if the virtual machine will be powered on aft er the clones are created. Then, if using VMware View, select Import into connection broker and choose VMware View. Then select Create new datastores if required and click Next.
7.
If no datastores are present, create select Create NFS datastore(s) or Create VMFS datastore(s).
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8.
Select the number of datastores to create and provide the root of the datastore name, the size of the datastore in gigabytes, and the aggregate that you want to use for the virtual machines. Then check the box for thin provisioning if needed. Then, for NFS-based datastores, the option to autogrow the datastore appears. Select the grow increment size, maximum size, and specific datastore names and click Next.
9.
After datastore creation, VSC displays the datastore that was created. If necessary, you can create additional datastores at this time and then click Next.
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10. Select the datastore where the virtual mac hine files are to be located and click Next.
11. If you selected "Import into connection broker," the wizard asks for the View server hostname, domain name of the View server, user name, and password. Then you can select to create an individual or manual desktop pool and provide a new or existing pool name. For manual pools, the admin has the option to create a persistent or nonpersistent pool. After this has been completed, click Next.
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12. Review the configuration and, if correct, click Apply. The provisioning process begins. You can use the Tasks window within the vCenter client to view the current tasks as well as the NetApp storage controller console.
13. After the creation of the virt ual machines, review the View configuration and entitle users by logging into the VMware View Connection Server 4.5 interface.
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14. Select the pool to be entitled. In this case it is the manual nonpersistent pool Helpdesk and click Entitlements
15. On the entitlements screen, click Add.
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16. Select users or groups, enter either a name or a description to narrow down the search, and click Find. Then click the user(s) or group(s) to be entitled. Then click OK.
17. Verify that the us ers and groups to be added are correct and click OK.
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18. Verify that the pool is now entitled and enabled.
19. Adjust the pool settings by clicking the pool, editing, and clicking Next until you get to the desktop/pool settings. Then, after adjusting the pool to your liking, click Finish. Note: The settings in this example are for demonstration purposes only. Your individual settings might be different. Consult the VMware View Administrators Guide for more information.
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20. Test the connection by logging into a desktop using the View client.
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12 USING VSC 2.0 PROVISIONING AND CLONING REDEPLOY

NetApp VS C gives administrators the ability to patch or update template VMs and redeploy virtual machines based off the original templat e. When desktops or servers are deployed for the first time, VSC track and maint ain the relationship between the desktop and the baseline template. Then, when requested, the administrator can redeploy clones for one or all of the virtual machines that were originally created from the baseline. The use cases for redeploy include but are not limited to: Redeploy after applying Windows patches to the VMs baseline Redeploy after upgrading or installing new software to the VMs baseline Redeploy when end user calls helpdesk with issues and providing fresh VM would most easily solve user issues
This model of deployment and redeployment works only when end-user dat a is not stored on a local drive. For this model of redeployment customers should use profile management software (such as AppSens e, RTO Software or Liquidware Labs Virtual Profiles) and folder redirection to store user dat a on CIFS home directories. This way the virtual machine is stateless and stores no user data and can easily
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be replaced without data loss. In addition, the redeployed image does not contain any end-user installed software, malware, spyware, or viruses, thereby reducing the number of threats to the company. At the left of Figure 25, four virt ual machines were deployed with VSC from the template on the left in the template datastore. A fter the administrator patched the template, it was then redeployed to the virtual machines VSC redeploy (see the right graphic in Figure 25) uses NetApp FlexClone to create near instantaneous clones of the cloned vm1flat. vmdk file while not disturbing the virtual machine configuration information. This leaves all View entitlements and Active Directory objects undisturbed.
Figure 25) Provision with NetApp VSC 2.0 and redeploy patched VMs with VSC 2.0.
Note:
Redeploy requires that the vCenter dat abase that was used during the creation of the rapid clones be used to redeploy the clones. If a new vCenter instance or server is installed and a new database is used, the link between the parent baseline and the rapid clones will be brok en. If this is the case redeploy will not work. In addition if vCenter is upgraded or reinstalled, VSC 2.0 must be reinstalled as well.
To use VSC redeploy: 1. 2. Install soft ware updates, patches, or changes to the baseline template virtual machine. Log into vCenter using the vCenter client.
3.
Select the NetApp icon from the Home screen of the vCenter client.
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4.
Select Redeploy from the provisioning and cloning capability.
5.
Select the baseline from which to redeploy. If the baseline does not appear, click Update table Then select the baseline and click Redeploy
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6.
Select the some or all of the virtual machines to redeploy and click Next.
7.
If needed, you can choose to power on the virtual machines after the redeploy or apply a new or updated guest customization specification.
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8.
Review the configuration change summary before proceeding and click Apply to continue.
9.
If the virt ual machines are powered on, the VCS redeploy powers off the virt ual machines and deploy in groups of 20 virtual machines. If you want to continue, click Yes. If not, click No.
10. Watch the tasks bar within Virtual Cent er to monit or the progress of the redeploy.
13 VMW ARE VIEW OPERATIONAL BEST PRACTICES

13.1 DAT A DEDUPLICATION
Production VMware View environments can benefit from the cost savings associated with NetApp deduplication, as discussed earlier. Each VM consumes storage as new writes happen. Scheduling and monitoring deduplication operations for the NetApp volumes hosting VMs are very important.
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DEDUPLICATION FOR VMS PROVISIONED AS VMWARE FULL CLONES Using NetApp deduplication, VMs provisioned using VMware full clones or linked clones can also achieve similar storage savings, as seen with the use case of provisioning VMs with NetApp VSC 2.0. Follow these steps to configure deduplication on the datastores hosting these VMs: 1. Log into vCenter using the vCenter client.
2.
Select the datastore from either the Datastore tab or within the ES X server, then right-click the datastore and select NetApp > Provisioning and Cloning > Deduplication management
3.
Verify the datastore that is to be deduplicated. Then select Enable deduplication, Start deduplication, and Scan and click OK.
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4.
If you are using NetApp clones, then deduplication is already enabled. You can manually start deduplication on all new data or all existing data by checking "Start deduplication" or "Scan?" Start deduplicating all new dat a from this point forward. Scanning starts a deduplication job of all existing data within the volume.
CONFIGURING DEDUPLI CATION SCHEDULES It is important to schedule the deduplication operations to run during off peak hours so that there is no effect on the end-user experience. Also, it is important to understand the number of simultaneous dedupe operations that can be performed on the storage controller. Planning for dedupe operations ultimately depends on your environment. Multiple scheduling options are available: Specific days of the week and hours, for example, run every day from Sunday to Friday at 11 p.m. Automatic: This means that deduplication is triggered by the amount of new dat a written to the flexible volume, specifically when there are 20% new fingerprints in the change log. Specific hour ranges on specific day(s)
To configure deduplication schedules using Systems Manager: 1. Launch the NetApp System Manager.
2.
Select the storage controller > Storage, Volumes, right-click the volume to be scheduled and then click Edit.
3.
Change the custom schedule to run at the times or during the ranges desired and click Apply when completed.
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MONITORING DEDUPLI CATION OP ERATIONS Deduplication operations should be monitored carefully, as readjusting the schedules for multiple reasons as the environment scales might be required. For example, the deduplication schedule for a new volume (storage controller on the East Coast) hosting a datastore representing a set of users on the West Coast starts too early to be running during production hours. Pooling virtual desktops with similar characteristics on the same datastore(s ) makes it easier to manage dedupe schedules. The status and storage savings of dedupe operations can be monitored using the NetApp System Manager, VSC Deduplication Management tab, and Virtual Storage Console.
For further details on NetApp deduplication, refer to NetApp TR-3505: NetApp Deduplication for FAS,
Deployment and Implementation Guide.
13.2 ANTIVIRUS OPERATIONS

For antivirus operations, you could either take a performance hit during scheduled AV operations and affect the end-user experience or appropriately design the VMware View solution to make the AV operations seamless. The first option is definitely not desirable. The second option can be approached in two different ways: Optimize the AV operation policies for VMware View. Since VMware View involves moving from a completely distribut ed CP U (on the end-user desktops) to centralizing much of the proc essing (in the VMs), the overall AV model should be thought about in a different way. Optimizing the traditional AV policies means better planning the scheduled AV scan and virus definition update so that not all the virtual desktops run AV scan or virus definition updates at the same time, creating CP U contention within the environment. By staggering the scheduled AV operations and distributing the load at different points in time, you can avoid a large percentage of this contention. In addition to modifying the schedules, it is important to verify that these schedules do not interfere with other scheduled events such as backup or replication. In addition, we suggest that AV scanning of CIFS home directories should be done on the storage side, where the storage arrays and AV servers can dedicate proc essing to this activity. This takes some load off the virt ual desktops. For more details, read TR-3107: NetApp Antivirus Scanning Best Practices Guide.
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Select intelligent, optimized, low-cost components for the VMware View solution that can effectively deal with the bursty performanc e requirement (such as AV operations) without increasing the overall cost of the solution.
Optimizing the AV operations for thousands of virtual desktops is not straightforward and requires even more int elligence, especially from the back-end shared storage. NetApp Virtual Storage Tiering and deduplication add a lot of value. They not only significantly reduc e the storage requirements for the otherwise redundant VMware View data, but also provide the capability to effectively deal with bursty AV operations, without increasing the overall costs. For more information, visit www. vmware.com/ files/pdf/VMware-View-A ntiVirusDeployment-WP-en.pdf
13.3 MONITORING NETAPP AND VMWARE VIEW INFRASTRUCTURE

NETAPP OP ERATIONS MANAGER As discussed earlier, NetApp Operations Manager is a comprehensive monitoring and management solution for the VMware View storage infrastructure. It provides comprehensive reports of system utilization and trends for capacity planning, space usage, and so on. It also monitors system performance and health to resolve pot ential problems. For further details on Operations Manager, visit the following solutions page: www.netapp.com/us/products/management-s oft ware/operations-manager.html. NETAPP ESUPPORT NetApp's proactive eSupport suite provides an early warning system that can actually reduc e the number and severity of technical support cases. Automation tools identify issues early, before they have an effect, and can initiate a fix without customer burden, before people even know there's a potential problem. Support automation works 24x7 to benchmark system status, collect diagnostic information behind the scenes, and issue proactive alerts. You can view the full scope of your NetApp environment on demand, at the company or device level. NetApp's eSupport suite of support automation tools includes: NetApp Remote Support Diagnostics Tool NetApp P remium AutoSupport NetApp A utoSupport
For more information on NetApp eSupport, visit www. netapp.com/us/support/esupport.html. SANScreen VM Insight As discussed earlier, consider implementing NetApp SA Nscreen VM Insight. It provides cross-domain visibility from the VM to the shared storage, allowing both storage and server administration teams to more easily manage their VMware View storage and server architectures. For further details on SANscreen VM Insight, visit the following solutions page: www. netapp.com/us/products/management software/sanscreen/sanscreen-vm-insight.html.
13.4 DAT A PROTECTION SOLUTION

NETAPP VSC 2.0 BACKUP AND RECOV ERY (FORMERLY SMVI) As discussed earlier, NetApp VSC 2.0 Backup and Recovery is a unique, scalable, integrated data protection solution and is an excellent choice for protecting VMware View environments. It integrates VMware snapshots with the NetApp array-based block-level Snapshot copies to provide consistent backups for the virtual desktops. It is NetApp primary storage data deduplication aware and als o integrates with NetApp SnapMirror replication technology, which preserves the storage savings across the source and destination storage arrays. You do not need to rerun dedupe on the destination storage
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array. The Backup and Recovery plug-in also provides a user-friendly GUI that can be used to manage the data protection schemes. The following are some of the important benefits of VSC Backup and Recovery: VSC Backup and Recovery Snapshot backups are based on the number of 4KB blocks changed since the last backup, as compared to the number of files changed in a traditional backup solutions (whic h for virtual desktops can be several gigabytes in size). This means that significantly fewer resources are required and the backups can be completed well within the window. Also, since VSC Backup and Recovery is a storage block-based data prot ection solution, daily full backups of vmdk files are not required, resulting in a lower TCO. Backup failure rate has always been a concern with traditional, server-based backup solutions because of various moving parts in the solution: for example, backup server farms, CPU and memory limitation per server, network bandwidth, backup agents, and so on. With a NetApp solution, the number of moving parts is significantly less and requires very few policies to manage the backups for thousands of virtual desktops as multiple datastores can be part of the same protection policy, also resulting in higher success rate and not introducing new operational complexities. There will be signific antly less net-new investment for backup infrastructure as VSC Backup and Recovery leverages the inherent capabilities in the NetApp storage array to perform backups and does not require new backup server farms. VSC Backup and Recovery allows flexible Snapshot retention scheduling that can be hourly, daily, and weekly to allow you to meet your level of RTO and RPO objectives. With VSC Backup and Recovery, there are no concerns about the growth or existence of the vmdk delta files while the hot VM backups are being performed bec ause VSC Backup and Recovery does not require the existence of the vmdk delta files for the entire duration of backups. They must exist only as part of the preproc essing step before VSC Backup and Recovery invokes the NetApp Snapshot copy on the storage array, which can be a few seconds to a few minutes. Also, you have an option to configure only the NetApp Snapshot copies and ignore performing VMware snapshots. Also, since the backups are storage array based and only deduplicat ed data gets trans ferred from the primary storage array to the secondary array, there are significantly less storage requirements on the secondary storage array. Also, the resource utilization on the various solution components (servers, storage, network, and so on) will be significantly less.
Scheduling considerations: Running of data protection policies should be properly planned to make sure that they dont interfere wit h the deduplication operations. Backup jobs should be scheduled to run after the deduplication operations so that minimum possible data must be replicated. VMware View considerations: As discussed earlier, a NetApp data protection solution can be leveraged for all seven virtual desktop types. An excellent use case is the data protection for user data disk, where the user data is encapsulated in a vmdk file. Protecting this data using traditional methods requires performing full backups of vmdk files every day or every time when the policy is scheduled to run. Another important consideration for user data change rate is the delta associated wit h the rebalanc e operations performed on us er data disks.
14 SUMMARY
To summariz e, VMware View enables organizations to increase corporate IT control, manageability, and flexibility without increasing cost and providing end users wit h a familiar desktop experience. NetApps key value proposition of at least 50% savings in storage, power, and cooling requirements; performance acceleration; operational agility; and a best-in-class data protection and business continuance solution makes it a perfect choice as a solution for storage and data management for VMware View. The key NetApp technologies (RAID-DP, thin provisioning, FlexClone, deduplication, Snapshot copies, and SnapMirror) provide the foundational strengths to support these claims. This guide has provided detailed guidance on how to architect, implement, and manage a large, scalable VMware View solution on NetApp storage. It also provides details on the best integration points for each
of the key enabling NetApp technologies and how eac h of the technology concepts plays a critical role and complements each other to work toget her as an integrated NetApp solution for VMware View of any scale. This guide is not intended to be a definitive implement ation or solutions guide. Expertise might be required to solve issues with specific deployments. Contact your local NetApp representative and make an appointment to speak wit h one of our VMware View solutions experts.
15 FEEDBACK
Send an e-mail to xdl-vgibutmevmtr@netapp.com with questions or comments concerning this document.
16 REFERENCES
Total Cost Comparison: IT Decision-Maker Perspectives on EMC and NetApp Storage Solutions in Enterprise Database Environments www.net app.com/library/ar/ar1038.pdf Wikipedia RA ID Definitions and Explanations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks Introduction to VMware vS phere www. vmware.com/pdf/ vsphere4/r41/ vsp_41_intro_vs.pdf Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide www. vmware.com/pdf/ vsphere4/r41/ vsp_41_san_cfg.pdf iSCSI SAN Configuration Guide www. vmware.com/pdf/ vsphere4/r41/ vsp_41_iscsi_san_c fg.pdf VMware View Administrators Guide www. vmware.com/pdf/ view45_admin_guide.pdf VMware View Manager www. vmware.com/ files/pdf/VMware-View-Manager-4-DS-E N.pdf VMware View Composer Deployment Guide www. vmware.com/ files/pdf/View_Composer_wp.pdf VMware View Optimization Guide for Windows 7 www. vmware.com/ files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows 7-E N.pdf VMware VMworld Conference Sessions Overview www. vmworld.com/ vmworld/home.jspa VMware Recommendations for Aligning VMFS Partitions www. vmware.com/pdf/ esx3_partition_align.pdf NetApp TR-3001: A Storage Networking Applianc e http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3001.pdf NetApp TR-3066: Data Protection Strategies for NetApp Storage Systems http://media.netapp.com/documents/wp_3066.pdf NetApp TR-3298: RA ID-DP: NetApp Implementation of RA ID Double Parity for Dat a Protection http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3298.pdf NetApp TR-3347: FlexClone Volumes: A Thorough Introduction http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3347.pdf NetApp TR-3348: Block Management with Data ONTAP 7G: FlexVol, FlexClone, and Space Guarant ees http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3348.pdf NetApp TR-3446: SnapMirror B est Practices Guide http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3446.pdf
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NetApp TR-3459: FlexShare Design and Implementation Guide http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3459.pdf NetApp TR-3466: Open Systems SnapVault (OSSV) Best Practices Guide http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3466.pdf NetApp TR-3505: NetApp Deduplication for FAS, Deployment and Implementation Guide http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3505.pdf NetApp TR-3563: NetApp Thin Provisioning http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3563.pdf NetApp TR-3671: VMware Site Recovery Manager in a NetApp Environment http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3671.pdf NetApp TR-3737: SMVI Best Practices http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3737.pdf NetApp TR-3749: NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3749.pdf NetApp Virtual Storage Cons ole 2.0 for VMware vS phere Provisioning and Cloning Administration Guide http://now.net app.com/knowledge/docs/hba/ vsc/relvsc20/pdfs/cloning.pdf
17 VERSION HISTORY
Version Version 1.0 Version 2.0 Version 3.0 Date September 2008 November 2008 March 2009 Document Version History Original document Updates to transparent storage cache sharing with NetApp Flash Cache and deduplication Update for VMware View Manager, transparent storage cache sharing, sizing, operational best practices, and RCU 2.0 Updated FlexScale mode recommendation Updated to include VMware vSphere 4, VMware View 4.0, RCU 3.0, VSC 1.0, and System Manager 1.0 Format and link updates Update to include NetApp VSC 2.0, View 4.5, vSphere 4.1 Update to TSCS to VST,
Version 3.0.1 Version 4.0
May 2009 February 2010
Version 4.0.1 Version 4.5 Version 4.5.1
March 2010 August 2010 June 2011
18 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chri s Gebhardt has been with NetApp since 2004 and is currently a Reference Architect leading NetApp VMware VDI virtualization solutions for NetApps Tec hnical Enablement Solutions Organization business unit. Chris has coauthored the NetApp and VMware VDI Best Practices (TR-3705), VMware View on NetApp Deployment Guide Using NFS (TR-3770), and NetApp FAS2050HA Unified Storage: A Guide to Deploying NetApp FAS2050HA with VMware View and the 50,000-S eat VMware View Deployment Whitepaper (WP-7108). He is a contributor to NetApps Virtualization Blog (http://blogs.netapp.com/ virtualization). He is a VMware vExpert, VMware Certified Professional 3 and 4,
Brocade Certified Fabric Professional, Brocade Certified SA N Designer, and NetApp Certified Implementation Engineer. Prior to joining the Virtualization Business Unit, he was a Professional Service Cons ultant with NetApp and was the Central Area Practice Lead for Network Storage Cons olidation and Virtualization Practice, where he authored many deployment guides. Prior to joining NetApp, Chris was a UNIX and NetApp administrator for seven years at a worldwide telecommunications company.
19 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors of this solution guide would like to thank George Costea, Eric Forgette, Peter Learmonth, Jack McLeod, Mike Slisinger, Vaughn Stewart, Abhinav Joshi and Larry Touchette for their contributions to this book.
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NetApp provides no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy, reliability or serviceability of any information or recommendations provided in this publication, or with respect to any results that may be obtained by the use of the information or observance of any recommendations provided herein. The information in this document is distributed AS IS, and the use of this information or the implementation of any recommendations or techniques herein is a customers responsibility and depends on the customers ability to evaluate and integrate them into the customers operational environment. This document and the information contained herein may be used solely in connection with the NetApp products discussed in this document.
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Copyright 2010 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc. NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, AutoSupport, Data ONTAP, FlexClone, FlexScale, FlexShare, FlexVol, NearStore, NOW, RAID-DP, SANscreen, SnapMirror, Snapshot, SnapVault, SyncMirror, and WAFL are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Active Directory, Microsoft, SharePoint, SQL Server, Windows, and Windows Vista are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. VMware is a registered trademark and vCenter, VMsafe, and NetApp and VMware Vie w Solution Guid Best Practices f or Design, Architecture, ment, Management vSphere are trademarks of e: VMware, Inc. All other brands or products areDeploy trademarks orand registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. TR-3705

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Tec hnic al Report

NetApp and VMware View Solution Guide

BEST PRACTICES FOR DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, DEPLOYMENT, AND MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 EX ECUTIV E SUMMARY ...............................................................................................................5

NETAPP SOLUTION AND COMPONENTS ...................................................................................8

NETAPP AND VMWARE VIEW DES KTOP POOLS .....................................................................17

ACCELERATI NG VMWARE VI EW WITH READ AND WRITE I/O OPTIMIZATION ........................21

STORAGE SIZI NG BEST P RACTICES ........................................................................................32

STORAGE ARCHITECTURE BEST PRACTICES ........................................................................43

DETAILS OF DEPLOYING NETAPP SPACE- EFFICIENT CLONES ........................................................................ 50

IMPLEMENTING BEST PRACTICES

3 INTRODUCTION TO VMW ARE VIEW

4 VMW ARE VIEW POOLS

VMWARE VIEW DESKTOP DELIVERY MODELS

Pool Type Manual Desktop Pool Automated Desktop Pool

Desktop Data Persistence

Persistent/Nonpersistent Dedicated/Floating Persistent/ Nonpersistent Dedicated/Floating

5 NETAPP SOLUTION AND COMPONENTS

SINGLE SCALABLE UNIFIED ARCHITECTURE

Figure 2) Traditional and thin provisioning.

Pre-allocated Physical Storage 100GB Actual Data

Storage On Demand 100GB Actual Data

Figure 3) Increased disk utilization with NetApp thin provisioning.

Figure 4) NetApp deduplication.

Figure 5) NetApp VSC plug-in.

Figure 6) NetApp Provisioning and Cloning plug-in in VMware vCenter.

Figure 7) NetApp SANscreen VM Insight plug-in in VMware vCenter.

6 NETAPP AND VMW ARE VIEW DESKTOP POOLS

VMware View Desktop Pool Type Provisioning Method User Assignment

Dedicated Floating Dedicated Floating Dedicated Floating

MANUAL DESKTOP POOL

VMware View Pool Type Cloning Method User Assignment

Dedicated NetApp VSC Floating Provisionin g and Cloning Capability

CIFS Thin Provisioning Thin Dedupe Provisioning Dedupe

RAID-DP VSC Backup and Recovery SnapMirror SnapVault

AUTOMATED DESKTOP POOL

VMware View Pool Type Cloning Method

Write I/O Optimization VST Flash Cache

RAID-DP VSC Backup and Recovery SnapMirror SnapVault

VMware View Pool Type Cloning Method

Login storms Virus scan and/or definition update storms

NETAPP WRITE OPTIMIZATION

BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING

95% Less Power Used

94% Less Heat

DEDUPLICATION AND NONDUPLICATION TECHNOLOGIES

Figure 12) NetApp deduplication in VMware environments.

Data Blocks Deduplication within VMware Environments

Table 6) Deduplication Recommendations for different data types.

Enable Deduplication Yes Yes No Yes Yes* Yes* No

TRADITIONAL AND VIRTUAL STORAGE TIERING

Figure 13) Traditional legacy storage array caching.

Cache & Data Deduplication

VM Dedupe Aware Cache

VM Disk Storage NetApp FAS Array

Is the deduped block in main memory?

Read data block from disk

NetApp FAS Array

Figure 17) NetApp Flash Cache without deduplication.

Figure 18) NetApp Flash Cache with deduplication.

You can verify these settings have been changed:

SUMMARY OF TRANSPARENT STORAGE ARRAY CACHE IN A VMWARE VIEW ENVIRONMENT

8 STORAGE SIZING BEST PRACTICES